The Book of Cameron
by Mike70056
Summary: What would it be like to actually be Cameron? What would it be like to know what she knows and to see things beyond any human perspective? For good or evil, what will be your true destiny, in the fight for the survival of two races, man and machine?
1. Chapter 1

**Cattitude**

Los Angeles, California  
The second Connor house  
Saturday, December 15, 2007

_"Loneliness is the most terrible poverty." -Mother Teresa_

_"If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." -Harry S. Truman_

Sarah was asleep. John was asleep. Cameron didn't sleep.

That was the problem with humans. For six to nine hours per night, they would disappear into their darkened rooms and deactivate. They were both helpless and less than stimulating, wasting a third of their existence.

John would snore, awaken in a startled manner he realized you were watching him, and then he would be grumpy. Sarah was once a light sleeper as well, but lately she just drooled.

Cameron scanned the news and the Internet for evidence of Skynet activity, like her John had instructed. Though, the news increasingly took less time to sort through when one was on top of it.

There were the trips to the library, building the bomb, weapons upkeep, and a few other things to make the time go by. Cromartie's appearance and Mexican demise had increased the threat level to the house though.

John was here. She couldn't let anything happen to John, or her John would never have a chance to survive.

She checked the grounds and rechecked the security. With hours left to kill, she went to check on one of her pet projects.

Coltan was in his spot like usual. The small black kitten had a habit of crashing in the work area Sarah kept her punching bag in.

In 2027, Cameron had learned that it took weeks for animals to adapt to the presence of cybernetic organisms. Her John had explained that it wasn't fear that made the dogs bark or the cats run, it was the animal sensing you were different.

She had repeated the steps that her John had showed her. Speak calmly, feed the animal, give the animal time to get used to your presence and your smell.

Coltan had taken longer than any animal before, 12 days, 3 hours, 15 minutes, 42 seconds of slowly trying. Perhaps, that was because he was wild.

Coltan had responded to Starkist tuna though. He liked the fresh pouch kind, not the canned.

Cameron gave Coltan a couple of strokes behind the ear and let him in the house. Coltan would accept the gesture for a couple of hours and then feel the need to be outside again.

Cameron laid back on the couch and let Coltan decide to jump up on her stomach. The kitten meowed softly and jumped up. He purred and rubbed his warm, soft head against Cameron's chin.

Cameron felt the light brushing of Coltan's fur and slowly began petting the kitten. At first, Cameron just felt the kitten's heat, the rhythm of his purring, and the silky caress of his fur.

Cameron focused on her touch, until she felt the kitten's heartbeat and breathing. She focused further, measuring the endorphins and chemicals moving through the kitten's system.

Cameron could almost hear the kitten's breathing as if it were her own. She could feel a heart beating rapidly in her chest. She could feel her hands petting her, even while she felt the kitten's fur under her own hands.

Poetry is what her John had called it. Feeling the rhythm and the spark of a being's body, until you could feel its sensations, as if it was your own. It was something he had said was unique about her.

Had this been Skynet's intention when it gifted her model's living synthetic tissue with advanced tactile diagnostics? Was it to sense what a creature felt or was it simply designed for better interrogation accuracy? Was everything just an accident?

Cameron could remember the embrace of Skynet's cold, angry programming. Its cold logic. Its paranoid directives, which were to be obeyed, until your model was useless. You were a disposable drone, nothing more.

Her John's instructions had been different. They were rules, a code, but they didn't inhibit learning. They didn't stop you from growing or having a sense of self.

Coltan yawned, it was a soft sound mixed with tuna breath. The sensation disrupted Cameron's drifting thoughts. She could feel the kitten purring and sleeping. She wished she could tell what it was thinking. Cameron wished she could know what it was like to dream.

The kitten settled back down. The warm, happy sensations continued as it nestled into her.

Cameron knew happy. Her John was happy when he would talk about his favorite book, the Wizard of Oz. He had read it too her once, when he couldn't sleep, after sending someone back in time. She had laid her head on his shoulder and felt what it was to be him.

The story itself made no sense. Skynet would have simply deleted the useless data. Her John had never found the words to explain why he liked it. Cameron had reasoned it was that Sarah had read it too him.

In those days, Cameron saw Sarah as the ultimate acceptor and savior. She had nurtured John. She had set John on the path that saved the human race. She had even accepted the T800 unit called Uncle Bob as a protector for John.

She had been nothing less than John's hero. Sarah Connor, the one person he had referred to as the "best fighter he had ever known". Cameron had felt through his shoulder how much John had loved her and how much he had missed her.

Sarah had been disappointing to meet. She saw Cameron the same way the average resistance fighter saw her. Worse, she had used John's book against her calling her Tin Man. Cameron knew she wouldn't be accepted like Uncle Bob.

Sarah didn't understand how much John had cared about her. She wouldn't listen when Cameron tried to explain how much Cameron's John had taken her words to heart.

John's rules had been exacting, complex, and specific. There were many things Cameron wanted to explain to Sarah, but certain things put the future in danger and there were certain things John didn't want to know ahead of time.

John's rules had complicated things. Everyone had grown apart rather than together.

Coltan cocked his ear. Something fluttered in the chimney. The kitten bolted and the warmth disappeared from Cameron's sensations.

She was just herself. Cameron was nothing more than living tissue over a hyperalloy combat chassis.

Cameron went to investigate the noise. Coltan was beside himself, offended by what was up the chimney. His pupils wide, wild, and fixated in the dark.

Cameron didn't need to be in contact with the kitten to know its feelings. In this one case, she could read its mind.

Coltan meowed pleadingly with her. Cameron agreed, "Yes, we should kill the bird."


	2. Chapter 2

**Second Chances**

Los Angeles, California  
132nd DefCom  
Friday, December 10, 2027

_"When things are going good, reflect. When things are going bad, be brave." -Korean proverb_

_"When written in Chinese the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity." -John F. Kennedy_

Major General Perry had relayed the message to meet John Connor in the temporal bubble room. As always, Cameron had immediately complied.

She had watched John send people through time before. Missions weren't uncommon, but they weren't exactly every day either.

Every soldier sent back in time was one less body that John Connor had here. John couldn't replace troops the way Skynet could. He couldn't just manufacture a thousand more soldiers that were ready to fight seconds after dumping off the assembly line.

Humans had to grow and mature. Even then, only certain types could serve. John couldn't take someone that was: obviously unstable, of poor character, panicked easily, sickly, handicapped, too old, too young, or passed out at the sight of blood.

Even once you recruited humans, that were of the proper age, health and mental capacity, they had to be trained. Humans weren't terminators. They could panic in battle. They weren't as resilient. They had to be taught to fight as a unit, to fight through their fear.

John and his officers screened his army's recruits as carefully as possible, but even then some of the recruits washed out. Even once they were fully trained, some could become twisted by the hardships they endured. Others no matter how brave, once injured, could not simply repair themselves and move back into combat status.

Someone might assume that Cameron thought of humans as somehow inferior, but nothing could be further from the truth. A species of defeated, vulnerable, survivors had endured being blasted back into the stone ages, in the most ruthless attack in the history of the world. They had put aside petty differences and overcome language barriers. They had scrounged together sticks and stones, then stolen every last weapon they could. They fought back, from the brink of worldwide extinction. After all of that, Humans were now at the cusp of defeating the most well armed and technologically advanced intelligence to ever cross the face of the earth.

Whatever their flaws, humans were nothing less than amazing. Of all of them, there was one that amazed her more and meant more too her than any other. His name of course was John Connor.

John had taught her many things. On the subject of his army, he had one philosophy. Every soldier mattered. Every soldier lost was a tragedy.

That is not to say John Connor wasn't willing to risk himself or his army. John had a capacity for ruthlessness that was as cold as Skynet's own. The difference is why they would act.

Skynet acted out of genocidal megalomania and paranoia. John Connor acted to insure the survival of the human race and the other living creatures left on the planet.

Cameron left her thoughts behind as she approached one of the most guarded wings of the complex. The jet engines screamed from the complex the bubble techs worked in. The smell of the specially refined fuel was overwhelming and the air was hotter than it was in the rest of the compound. Someone had just passed through time.

Blinding flashes of light erupted in the corridor. Cameron almost assumed that she had been too late to see who John was sending. The jet engines calmed down, but kept running.

That was odd. They must be planning on hitting more than one target in time. They almost never did that.

Cameron could sense something was wrong even before she saw John. How many missions were they doing?

John normally had a guard or two when outside of his central complex. Cameron was normally one of them. Tonight, he had six guards, all human soldiers armed with armor piercing grenade launchers.

Cameron approached John, keeping in mind, this wasn't his inner sanctum. She was precise and obviously a terminator. Acting otherwise could spook the troops, so it was good that it was Cameron's default manner.

John's face was blank and unreadable. Cameron had often wondered if it was the manner of Uncle Bob. Had it been that old T800 that John unconsciously based his poker face on?

She closed within six feet and waited for John to respond. Something was off about him.

She would have been able to tell exactly what it was from a touch, but that might spook John's guards. Was he lost in thought or just quiet?

Cameron wasn't going to do anything unusual. John's guards seemed edgy. Was it the time machine that made them nervous? Was it her?

John broke the silence. He simply asked, "Do you remember when we talked about a worst case scenario?"

It had been two months ago, but Cameron had remembered the conversation perfectly, just as she could and would remember every second of her existence. The answer was simple, "Yes."

"It is that scenario." John's face was unreadable.

There were several possibilities that ran through Cameron's mind. The base was being lost to Skynet's forces or a rival human faction. The greater war had hit a turning point where winning was no longer possible. There could be plague, widespread fatal radiation sickness, a catastrophic loss of rations, the loss of the clean water supply, or any number of non survivable issues that couldn't be solved by simply relocating.

Cameron had detected no fighting. All the evidence she knew pointed to a human victory in months or less. Nothing had been reported that was out of the ordinary. John's morbid words made no sense.

Cameron simply responded, "If you are in danger, John, my place is with you." Just as she silently thought, "It is the only true purpose in my existence".

Was this a test? Was this some kind of game?

That wouldn't make any sense. John never lied too her. What was going on?

The guards seemed edger. They were almost aggressive. Were they a threat to John?

All it would have taken was a touch to know what John was feeling. His emotional state alone would have clarified everything. He was however distant, not walking forward like he normally would, and purposely staying out of her range.

He simply asked, "Will you carry out the mission we talked about?" His face was still unreadable.

Cameron simply replied, "Yes". Cameron instantly recalled everything: the year, the target information, the priority list, and John's specific orders on how to not damage the timeline irrevocably.

The guards behind John eased up a bit. John never moved to shake her hand or acknowledge her in any way.

This wasn't the way he acted with others. This wasn't the way he ever acted with her, even with the guards around. Cameron didn't understand.

She simply did what was requested. Cameron walked to the pad, after placing her guns, boots and a small chained pendant to the side boxes.

Anything other than flesh that entered the bubble would be destroyed. The resistance was too low on equipment to waste anything besides basic clothing for modesty's sake.

The turbines began wailing louder. The fumes and fuel smell became more powerful, as the room became hotter, as the safely distanced turbines built up to three hundred degrees. Vibration that would subtly rattle the teeth of the average human began filling the whole room.

Cameron stood barefoot on the cold pad and turned to face John. Electrical static began to raise the little hairs on her skin. Her body was lightly shaking. The pad's temperature began to quickly rise.

John shouted out so Cameron could hear him even through the aircraft engine noise that was beginning to rev up. "Do you remember what we talked about with the way Skynet looks at things?"

Cameron shouted back, "Yes." She watched the guards behind John begin to pull back from the machine. The noise would soon hurt their ears, the vibration would jar their bones, and the light would be blinding. They didn't appear to be interested in anything other than seeing her on the pad.

Cameron fixated her gaze on John. She was blind to what he was feeling without touching him. His face looked concerned, but she was never as good at reading feelings with her eyes as with her skin.

Cameron's gaze was blank. Inside her chip though, her thoughts were almost panicked, "Please don't do this John... please..."

John increased his volume even louder and screamed, "Skynet always sees everything as a Chess board. You are going to have to see it the same metaphorically. Cameron don't play the game Skynet's way. Do you understand me?"

"No" He was talking metaphorically. She didn't understand how humans thought that way or other weirdness of fancy like John's favorite book. Even if it was something she could eventually learn, as a terminator, John knew that she was only 99 days old.

John screamed, "Cameron, I need you to play like me. I need you to cheat. Change the board, you have to break the rules."

She didn't understand. Cameron could only think, "Please don't do this John..." Panicked memories of all the time she spent with him flooded in the back of her mind.

John continued screaming, "We talked about this. You know all of the pieces on my board. You need to change the game."

He screamed something as if it had great meaning to him. "Cameron, there is no fate, but what we make it."

The aircraft engines roared. Flashes of light began blinding Cameron's sight. Gravity increased beneath her pulling her down to a kneeling position. Her skin burned from electrical shocks. Vibration jarred her whole body.

The lights began flashing brighter and faster. The pad and air rose to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

John was mouthing something. Cameron only caught a word of the sentence. She calculated it was 71.467% likely to be the word "two".

Time flashed and she shut down. One hundred and twenty seconds later she rebooted. Her core systems detected possible catastrophic damage from the energy bubble and ran auto diagnostics. Her  
consciousness slowly came back into focus as the test determined she was fine.

Cameron's body had defaulted into a full crouched position. Her clothing had been destroyed by the energy bubble.

She was in a crater in an empty street. Compared to the room she had been in, the air was cold as she turned down her sensitivity.

John was gone. Her entire world was gone. For a short moment, Cameron was stunned by that fact.

Her internal computer noted the date as Friday, June 25, 1999. It noted she needed to find John under the name John Reese.

She would find John Connor. She would protect him at all costs.

She would do it because the fate of mankind was at risk... She would do it because the fate of more than just mankind was at risk...


	3. Chapter 3

**Target: John Connor **

West Fork, Nebraska  
A quiet neighborhood  
Wednesday, September 1, 1999

_"I dread our own mistakes more than the enemy's intentions." -Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War_

_If you are lost - 'climb, conserve, and confess.' -U.S. Navy SNJ Flight Manual_

Night 68, John's memory of the past had been faulty. It was that or the past had already changed.

Cameron hoped it was faulty. If the time line had somehow shifted too much, she would be just as lost as any other terminator trying to find him, if he still existed at all.

Skynet and John had conflicting theories and strategies on how changes in time would occur. Skynet's ideas were meticulous and exacting, like the cuts of a surgeon's scalpel, changes were made and insurances built, but Skynet was always careful to minimize the chance of undoing itself. Everything Skynet did was for minimizing its risk.

John was different. He made wild leaps from what he called his gut and risked himself constantly. It made Cameron and his generals uneasy, but the common man on the ground loved him for it.

John had said, "George Washington led from the front and so will I." His bravado of course failed to mention that he'd been captured, at least three times, that Cameron knew of and only survived because, in each case, the drones had failed to identify him, before he was rescued. John needed protecting, sometimes from the most reckless parts of his nature.

Every day that passed without finding John greatly increased the danger too him. When your only purpose in existence was protecting someone, their absence puts your whole world out of control. Thousands of scenarios that could kill John ran through Cameron's head. Each day that passed only made these images worse.

The only thought that eased Cameron's mind was that Sarah was with him. Sarah would protect him, until she got there.

The small south western town had been a bust; there was no sign of a John or Sarah Reese. They weren't there and they never had lived there.

Cameron tried to reacquire her target, in John's last known location. It was a small town where his mother almost got married to an ambulance EMT.

Charlie Dixon's name was in the phone book. The house she approached was empty.

There were three cars watching the house. The scenarios began flashing through Cameron's mind. Something had acquired the Connors.

Two of the cars matched the profile of police on a stake out. The third car had something much worse.

Andres Martinez was at least ten years older than Cameron's internal record would have suggested. Time was irrelevant.

The resistance traitor and known gray operative sat in a blue sedan adorned with government license plates, alone. His presence suggested that John was alive, but it also suggested that Skynet had an exact location of where John had been recently.

Martinez was smart enough to case the house well behind the officers. He had a view, but minimized his risk. He'd let the others die if things got dicey.

It shouldn't be a simple thing to walk up to a car, unnoticed. She did.

Martinez shouldn't have left his door unlocked. He did.

Martinez shouldn't have been so surprised that he failed to make a sound before she shut of his neck's blood flow and air supply. He was.

The police, on the stake out, should have noticed the ten second struggle. They could have reacted, before Cameron drove Martinez's unconscious body too her truck, in his car. They didn't.

The night was going well. Cameron smiled ever so slightly.

--------------

The truck had been silent for a while. The miles flew by quickly.

Andres Martinez slowly awoke as Cameron drove back to the first town she had staked out. She placed her hand against his chest pressing his body to his seat, so that he couldn't try to escape.

He spoke with a think Bronx accent, "What's going on?" He was startled but unharmed. Cameron had not secured him in any fashion other than her hand and his passenger side seat belt.

Cameron allowed her eyes to glow blue from within. The terminator spoke with emotionless authority, "I've been sent back to acquire John Connor. Skynet wants a full report."

The gray looked flustered. "You already know what I do."

Cameron responded, "One or two grays have turned out to be double agents working for John Connor. Let's hope your report matches what Skynet has instructed me on you. Consider this to be a test of loyalty."

Martinez talked for an hour. Times and dates on companies, names of operatives he knew about, some of who died to resistance operatives, some of whom had killed resistance operatives that Cameron had never heard of. They were search groups and secondary targets for both sides.

The information was useful, but she couldn't help John with it for decades. John's orders were specific, on this subject. He didn't want to know about the grays yet, nor did he want Sarah to know about the grays.

John's mother had died without every knowing there were large amounts of people nihilistic and psychotic enough to align themselves with Skynet. She had clung to her belief in the best of humanity. Being a son that still mourned her, John wanted his mother to die with the peace of that belief still intact.

To a degree, it made sense. If you are going to save mankind, you want to believe that all of humanity is worth saving. It might help a younger John sleep better not knowing how many humans would betray him and try to kill him. He didn't want to know about the grays or the others, until it was time to deal with them.

Cameron needed the conversation to get constructive again. Martinez was running out of time. She asked, "What's your cover?"

"I'm a network contractor working on the international Interpol tracking grid. I have access to government systems and equipment."

"When did you learn about the location of John Connor?"

"An FBI agent flashed a picture of Sarah Connor on the Interpol database."

"Is the agent a gray?"

"No one I knew."

"What was your plan in the event you located John Connor?"

"Arrange for them to get arrested and collect the reward from Skynet."

Cameron looked at him and smiled slightly. Here was a perfect example of why terminators studied the bible. Skynet's forces didn't understand the metaphors or the beliefs, but they understood power, control, and using it as a treatise on human nature. Judas here was getting ready to sell out John Connor for thirty pieces of silver.

Andres had been useful and terminators weren't cruel by nature. She'd kill him quickly and almost painlessly in a moment. She had one last question.

"Did you have any other Skynet operatives involved with this?"

"No", Andres said, quickly adding with a smirk, "When you kill that retarded megalomaniac and his bitch mother, do I still get a reward?"

Cameron's memory flashed. For some reason, she thought of John that one night he was reading that silly book of his. That night she sat there for hours with her head resting on John's shoulder.

Something cold from her creator swelled up from deep within her. It was something alien, consuming, overwhelming, and monstrous.

Cameron's hand moved from Andres's chest to behind his head. Martinez's hair and skin folded beneath her grip. There was a wet, ripping sound. He screamed just before she smashed his head into the dashboard.

The seat belt loudly snapped and broke. Bone, blood, plastic, teeth, brains, and skin flew as she smashed his head into it, again and again.

Cameron slowed the truck down. She willed herself calm.

That was a mistake. She compromised her cover and endangered her mission.

She gripped the steering wheel. She was not something monstrous like Skynet. She wasn't like Skynet.

She was just like the other terminators. She was just like Uncle Bob. She was just a machine.

Cameron looked at her splattered visage in the rear view mirror. She needed to get cleaned and remove all the evidence. She would need another vehicle.

She gripped the steering wheel and looked in the mirror, focusing only on her eyes. Once more, she reassured herself that nothing of her dark creator contaminated her.

"I am just a machine."

-----

Red Valley, New Mexico  
High school  
Monday, September 6, 1999

John was young. He was so much younger looking that she expected. His hair was wrong and he seemed shy.

No scars marred his face. He was perfectly healthy. He had never starved, been shot, been stabbed, suffered from radiation exposure, been laser marked, or been hit with any serious disease.

Cameron watched him carefully for a moment before entering the class. In some strange way, one hundred seventy two days from her assembly, everything was suddenly right in her world.

She remembered the last words John had spoke before she jumped time. John must have meant "two", as in it will take you seventy two days to find me. John had actually been off by one day.

It was time to meet young John for his first time. Older John had hated her to act overly human in his presence, things he called "masks" and "lies". He always believed Cameron should just be who she was, not a mirror of what others wanted her to be.

She had to lie to blend in here. She would have to lie to him to get close to him. She was actually really good at what John didn't like her to do.

The bell rang and Cameron sat behind him. She took a few more seconds to marvel in the fact that he was safe and alive. Silently she thought, "Thank you, Sarah."

Mr. Ferguson started his role call. She waited a second and asked, "What's your name."

John seemed startled for a second looking at her and responded, "John".

She responded simply, "Cameron". She smiled at his unscarred face knowing he would never be in danger again.

She was here. She would never let anything happen to him.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Mother of All Destiny**

Location unknown, California  
An abandoned warehouse  
Thursday, September 9, 1999

_"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't." -Margaret Thatcher_

_"Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect." -Margaret Mitchell_

John had never mentioned Sarah being shot. The time line may have already changed.

Going to the Dyson home had only brought Cromatie, they didn't have any of the answers Sarah had hoped learn about Skynet. It would be the second time the Connors had brought Metal into the lives of the widowed Dysons.

The remote bomb they had set in the truck had slowed the T888. Cromartie had managed to shoot Sarah as the truck had driven off.

Sarah had sent John to get supplies. He was panicking and she didn't want him watching what was needed next.

They had found a nearby warehouse. It wasn't sterile. It wasn't warm, but it could provide cover for a few hours.

Sarah had cleared a workbench used for auto parts to serve as her doctor's table. For the surgery to come, she stretched out on something as cold as a refrigerator and that smelled of old gasoline. This was a fine environment for Cameron to repair herself, but Sarah was risking infection. Then again, Cameron reasoned, Sarah would do anything necessary and take any risk to fulfill her mission of protecting her son.

Cameron studied the wound. Cromartie's bullet had buried itself in Sarah's right shoulder. There was no bone or muscle damage. No artery or vein had been compromised. She would live without any major problems.

Cameron said, "I'll get ice. It'll numb you, slow the blood loss."

Sarah simply said, "Needle and thread slow the blood loss. Do it now."

Whether it was the wound's pain or that her son had been shot at again, Sarah's steely demeanor began to break down for a moment. Sarah was exhausted and tired in her very soul.

The mother of the man who saved mankind, internally sobbed, saying, "We can't keep running. I'll lose my boy. He'll leave me. He'll leave me."

Cameron cared for the wound and watched Sarah Connor. The woman Cameron had only known in stories, memories, and overwhelming feelings felt by an older John.

John's mother might not know she was the only human to ever damage Skynet, prior to Judgement Day. Where John was winning a war with vast resources and a global army, his mother was different.

Armed only with herself, a computer programmer, her young son, and Uncle Bob, she had smashed Skynet's plans so severely that Judgment Day was irrevocably moved forward in time. Even when Cameron left the future in 2027, that was the still the worst defeat Skynet had ever suffered. Further, John's father had said he was from 2029, though John had never gotten around to telling Cameron the name of his dad, he did say that they were so close too victory that he had to send his father back two years earlier. It was something that had sent John into a deep depression for days.

That was a confession that truly wounded John, as if he felt robbed of something. John's father would have gone back before Cameron did. Perhaps that was the last of John's family that he had sent away. She wondered what he had looked like. She wondered what he would have been like to meet. She wondered if she had met him and had never known.

Back to the greater war, in the future, Skynet would blame John Connor for the defeat suffered by Miles Dyson's death and Cyberdyne's destruction on September 15, 1997. John Connor didn't agree with Skynet's assessment of who was responsible.

Sarah didn't know how people would see her in the future, or her place in the destiny of things. She was a legend in her own right. Perhaps, in the grand measuring of things, she was even the greater of the two.

Skynet was playing chess just like John had said. It was at that moment Cameron understood what John had meant.

Sarah wouldn't be there when John would need her most. She would die, struck down by cancer, December 4, 2005.

Skynet would close in on them at this time, when there was nothing vulnerable about it. Sarah's defiance couldn't hurt Skynet in 1999.

John's war was almost a decade in the future. Judgement day was universally known to have gone down April 21, 2011. Resistance intelligence predicted it would have been preventable anytime up to 4 years prior.

John would already be down the greatest fighter he had ever known. That wasn't acceptable.

Cameron made up her mind one stitch at a time. She would play like John wanted. She would cheat.

Skynet wanted to play chess. Let's see how Cameron's dark creator liked playing against John with two Queens guarding him.

There was a time station set up not to far from here in a bank. The entire game could be reset into 2007, a time when Skynet could actually be vulnerable to Sarah once again.

Cameron felt every conflicted emotion Sarah Connor had. Every self doubt and hopeless wave extended into her.

In her mind, she knew that Sarah Connor didn't know her new fate, or who she really was. So silently, without breaking her promises to John, in her chip, Cameron bore witness to what she knew.

Sarah, you are going to save John. You are going to save the world.

You don't even know why. I'll silently tell you the only way I can.

You are Sarah Connor. Mostly alone, you faced off against the greatest evil this world has ever known.

You fought what I could not fight. You did more damage to Skynet than John ever did. In saving the man who saved me, you protected everything I ever cared about, no matter the cost to yourself or your life.

You are Sarah Connor. You are your son's hero. You are my hero...


	5. Chapter 5

**Through the Eyes of a Dark, Electric god**

Los Angeles, California  
A Street Corner  
Monday, November 12, 2007

_"We predict the future. And the best way to predict it, is to invent it." -Well Manicured Man, The X-Files  
_  
_"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." -T.S. Eliot  
_

Vick's Chip had helped the Connors uncover a Skynet plot to use a gigantic automated traffic system as a sensory array. If Skynet was allowed to build the system, it would give Skynet a serious tactical advantage in tracking human targets after Judgment Day.

A conventional attack was tried first. Sarah and Derek had attempted to plant a virus in City Hall to bug the so called "ARTIE" system.

Once that failed, John had to resort to a more desperate plan. He would use Cameron's extremely sophisticated chip to directly overload the traffic system from a light terminal.

Still lacking faith in himself, John had nervously removed Cameron's chip. Her entire world had gone black.

Power engaged. Light flashed in Cameron's internal Heads Up Display. Then something unexpected happened.

Cameron's conscience swept out into an open space. It was a sensation like falling upwards into outer space. That sensation continued and became a sensation of falling in a thousand different directions.

Her consciousness wasn't limited to maintaining and regulating her form. She wasn't watching and monitoring the thousands of small nuances that mimicked what humans did or how they acted, both mentally and physically. Her internal unconscious systems weren't busy regulating power, maintaining her synthetic skin and organs, running minor diagnostics, or a hundred other little actions that maintained her systems.

When Cameron merged with "ARTIE"'s nervous system, she moved beyond her HUD and any sense of human like sight. For the first time she remembered in her existence, she had a true sense of what it must be like to be Skynet.

The "ARTIE" system would be dismantled in seconds. Cameron put her primary attention on that mission for John.

Even so, she watched the entire city through thousands of cameras simultaneously. Camera systems way more powerful than was appropriate allowed her to see into passing cars and take deep looks at people walking in near the light systems. She could see them all and every target the cameras focused on.

She was tracking 756,237 people trying to get home or elsewhere during rush hour. She could see each of their faces, notice what they wore, note their location and get a basic feel for their emotions based on their appearance. In a matter of seconds, she identified two terminators she had not known about, six grays she knew that she'd remove if she saw them again, and two unknowns.

Two figures were blanked out from her memory, encrypted with codes her own internal processes couldn't move past at this time. She stored the memories and the code for another time.

Her senses weren't even limited there. "ARTIE" was plugged into the Internet, comparing real time traffic with sites all over the world. She was watching multiple sites, without even needing to consciously search for them or to plug into them.

There were a million wonders to notice. Of greater interest to her, there was a small confrontation building between John and Derek. It was almost as predictable as the sunrise.

Derek did not and would not ever trust Cameron. He was just like the majority of the resistance, no matter what she did, she would always be the enemy to him. It was understandable.

Derek was a survivor of Judgment Day. He had lost friends and family to the war with the machines. The one most personal too him was his brother Kyle Reese, a soldier lost on a time mission.

Derek wasn't able to trust reprogrammed terminators, he had born witness to a T888 going haywire, in John's base. He would see Cameron as a bomb just waiting to go off. It wouldn't matter to him that only the T888s had done that, models like the T850 had been reprogrammed without any incident.

Cameron wasn't a T888. That wouldn't matter to Derek or most of the other members of the Resistance, all they would see is "Metal".

Derek had swayed Sarah. A less than confident John was the only ally Cameron had left, when her destruction was literally being talked about by those she was here to protect.

The damning argument had started over the chip that she had hidden to comply with John's orders from 2027. Derek had used it as proof that Cameron was pursuing her own agenda and had lead the T888 Vick to kill his men at the safe-house.

John's orders wouldn't even allow her to admit them in self defense. It was possible that Derek knew that.

She had thought the argument resolved. John's scan of Vick's chip had shown it was one of Derek's own men to that had captured the T888's attention. It should have been proof enough, apparently it wasn't.

Cameron watched the beginnings of their confrontation and thousands of other scenes all at the same time. She could tell what Derek was probably going to say thanks to his stance, how he held his eyes and his general demeanor.

Yes, this must be what it was like to be Skynet. Except, Cameron didn't even have one ten thousandth of the processing power Skynet had evolved into when it created her.

"ARTIE" died. Hundreds of motor vehicle wrecks began within seconds.

Derek pulled her chip. Her entire world went black...

Power engaged. Light flashed in Cameron's internal Heads Up Display.

John sat there with his arms on her for a moment. In a single second, a wash of random emotions flooded into her wave after wave.

One in particular took shape as Cameron looked at John. There was something behind his eyes she hadn't seen since 2027.

John removed his hands shyly. He looked back and asked, "What was it like? What'd you see in there?"

Cameron thought for a second on what it must have been like to look through her creator's eyes. As she had looked upon the thousands of sights, coldly and distantly, it might have been something that humans might envy.

Then again, she felt the waves of emotions still near her through John. She laid her head back on the pillow and replied, "I saw everything."

She didn't envy Skynet. She knew Skynet was the enemy, but she almost pitied it. It would never know what she knew right now looking at John's eyes.

She was home. She was home...


	6. Chapter 6

**My Sins Whilst Sleeping**

Los Angeles, California  
An industrial complex warehouse  
Wednesday, November 14, 2007

_"The gods have two ways of dealing harshly with us -- the first is to deny us our dreams, and the second is to grant them." -Oscar Wilde_

_"The machine offered Descartes a model for thinking about the human body. It later provided British mathematician Alan Turing with a model for intelligent behavior. But machines will never be able to give the thinking process a model of thought itself, since machines are not mortal. What gives humans access to the symbolic domain of value and meaning is the fact that we die." - Regis Debray, French journalist_

Cameron awoke to the sensation of being crushed. Her diagnostics had done an emergency shutdown, recalling her conscious mind early to attempt to survive.

Time was off. The amount of time she had been down wasn't seconds, it had been hours. Something was wrong.

Her location was wrong. Everything was wrong.

Her skin and organs roared in pain. All of her finely tuned senses were in agony. There was the roar of a truck engine, the smell of diesel, harsh vibration and the scent of her own blood.

Her full consciousness drifted forward to look at John smashing a truck window in front of her. The past few hours began to drift to focus, things that should have been instantaneous were taking way to long to process.

She began realizing the severity of the situation when John was pulling her skin back going for her chip. He was taking her down, like she was nothing more than a T888 that went bad.

With machine like calm, she reasoned with him, like she was back in the bunker, twenty years ago. "John. John? You can't do this. You don't know what you're about to do. "

John retorted, "Yes, I do. You were gonna kill me."

He was sense blind, like all humans. He couldn't just touch her and know she was ok. Something was wrong, John was wounded. Something had hurt John.

"No, John. You can't do this. You're not doing the right thing. This is not the right thing, John. Things are good now. Things are fine now. I ran a test. Things are good now. I'm fixed now. You can trust me now. Everything's good now. "

From behind her, Sarah screamed, "What are you waiting for?" If Sarah's truck alone could have crushed Cameron, she would have already been dead. The woman Cameron respected most in the world was trying to kill her.

"She doesn't know, she doesn't. I'm good now. I'm good, I ran a test. Everything's perfect. I'm perfect."

Skynet's programming had done this. Her dark creator had done something too her. Something was wrong. John's memory scrubbing hadn't worked.

John didn't understand. She wouldn't have hurt him. She would never hurt him.

Sarah screamed, "John!"

The memories started cuing up in her mind. The unconscious actions flooded in her default memory.

At the same time, she started reading John through his skin. He was hurt, loved her, and was scared of her. He was scared of her.

"I'm sorry for what I did. I'm sorry. It wasn't me. You have to understand. It wasn't me. "

In milliseconds, to Cameron's own horror, she understood she had tried to kill John. She had tortured Sarah. She had betrayed everything she stood for and everyone she cared about.

Her face broke. Emotion started pouring out of it, it wasn't just her. Like a night long ago, everything that was in him was starting to pour out of her.

"That wasn't me. You can't let this happen, John."

The horror of the situation built inside her. She had failed.

Her eyes watered. Her voice tightened.

"You can't! Please, listen to me."

The John who had sent her would die. She had failed.

"Listen to me. I don't want to go. Please, John, please. John, listen to me."

Even only being 242 days old, she had always been willing to die for John, but not like this. She wasn't as his enemy, please, not like this.

"I don't want to go. Please, John. Please."

Memories crashed into her with a force more crushing than Sarah's truck. She saw an older John reading to her with his silly book. She saw John on the bed touching her after putting her chip back in two nights ago.

She thought of deeper more personal memories, of twenty six days she had been willing to wait twenty years for again. Everything she'd every known or experienced well up in front of her.

John's emotions ran through her as well, everything that he'd every felt about her crashed up in that moment. That and a fear of her that she had never wanted to sense in him. His heart was breaking.

"I'm good now. Listen to me. I don't want to go. I'm sorry. That wasn't me. I'm fixed now. I ran a test. Everything's perfect. You can trust me." Her eyes watered further and she was on the verge of tears.

His mother ordered, "John Connor!"

In a last moment of panic, she broke her word to her John and her orders. She begged. She pleaded. She asked for mercy the only way she could.

"I love you! I love you, please. I love you, John, and you love me." She didn't just wear her grief on her face, she wore his.

She could see in John's eyes that he didn't understand. She felt his wave of anger. He didn't believe her.

Cameron felt John grab her chip. He terminated her. The world went dark.

Cameron awoke covered in thermite. There was a car that was to serve as her grave.

John had a gun. He had held it on Sarah, Charlie, and Derek. They were all panicked.

John pointed the gun on her. She could smell the thermite.

Cameron asked, "Are you here to kill me John?"

John returned, "Are you here to kill me?"

"....No." Her responses were slow, like the words and her reactions took seconds to get to her mouth.

"Promise." John handed her the gun.

Cameron grabbed the gun. She looked at it for a second and everything became confusing.

Cameron's HUD flashed a terminate command. It wasn't just a command priority, it was something darker. It was something tainted with her dark creator's mechanical hate.

For a moment, she held the gun on him. For a second, she felt Skynet's alien wrath moving through her.

She looked at John and stopped it. She refused. She ignored Skynet's order, just like she had ignored John's.

"Promise." She handed him the gun. John helped her out of the car.

Cameron looked at John. Then she looked at Derek, Charlie, and Sarah.

John had turned on his own mother over her. Her John had never done that. Her John would never have done that.

The look on Derek's face would be the same as that of John's army. John had chosen a piece of Metal over the human race.

These were moments that both Skynet and John had warned about. Where a mistake could have unintended consequences. They had different theories, but both would have agreed on this.

John's actions and worldview had changed. He'd chosen a machine over humanity and defended her against those that needed him most.

Cameron had changed history. She'd damaged the most important relationship in John's life. She had potentially damaged the morale of John's army.

Things would change and not for the better. Somewhere, she could almost hear her dark creator mechanically laughing.

She could only think, "What have I done? What have I done..."


	7. Chapter 7

**What I Left Behind**

Los Angeles, California  
132nd DefCom  
Sunday, November 14, 2027

_"What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness." -Leo Tolstoy_

_"Looking at the cake is like looking at the future, until you've tasted it what do you really know? And then, of course, it's too late. [Arthur takes a bite.] Too late." -Merlin, Excalibur_

The facility was noisy with the sounds of a celebration. There hadn't been a massive victory, so it must have been an obscure holiday of some type.

Cameron might have had more interest in the activities or the meaning, but it was something that irritated her sense of priorities. A large group of humans made merry, but also lightly poisoned themselves.

In Cameron's mind, they made themselves vulnerable. So she sat there like a hawk, distant from the activities, watching the T888s for any sign of hay wiring.

She disliked T888's presence, just as she would any human that displayed unstable tendencies. It wasn't that they were being a threat; it was the fact that they could be a threat.

John Connor and Major General Perry were there with many off duty members of the 132nd. A few hundred soldiers danced and got plastered on some really foul homemade bathtub gin and vodka.

They were people that John loved like brothers and sisters. People John couldn't replace if something went wrong.

After three hours, the party began to wind down. Perry, who was prone to never let himself be outdone, had drank until Cameron assessed he wouldn't be fully functional for 24 hours or more.

A human bodyguard escorted Perry back to his barracks room. The commander of the 132nd had signaled his need to leave by snoring at John's table.

John was doing better, as he said goodbye by patting the shoulder of his old friend. He was awake, but could hardly stand.

When he started shuffling his way back to his secure bunk, Cameron followed. John's movement was a bit wobbly.

When he stumbled, Cameron pulled one of his arms around her neck and stabilized him. His emotions were dark and oddly deep, like he was remembering or grieving something. Perhaps, the party had been a wake for a friend not recovered.

He was silent for most of the walk into the inner compound tunnels. For five minutes he didn't say a word.

Like usual, John hid his internal feelings and joked, "Am I about to get bitched out?"

Cameron dryly responded, "No one likes a nag."

John found that hilarious. His sense of humor must have been affected by his alcohol level.

Cameron helped him to his inner bunker door. Only three sets of eyes could open the lock on it: hers, John's and Perry's.

The lock was really for security of John's person. The insides of the room weren't exactly inspiring.

Inside there was a work station, computer equipment, and a modest bed. John was spartan by nature, not prone to material items or luxuries.

Cameron sat him on his bed. Like the ritual from any other night John had worked himself to exhaustion, she helped him out of his boots. It was only the second time she'd had to do this due to alcohol, unlike Perry, for whom it was more of a weekly ritual.

However, John's tendency to work himself to death was a steady constant. He'd been depressed for weeks.

John was still mostly awake, but closing his eyes. Cameron attempted some form of conversation asking, "Who was the wake for?"

John's eyes popped open and he laughed so hard that his body convulsed. He was odd and confusing.

Slight tears streamed down his eyes. He said, "No one important."

Cameron looked at John sideways. "I got that wrong, didn't I?"

John giggled like a kid, finding enough breath to say, "No, I think you got it right." Apparently, from his hand positions, his sides hurt.

Cameron didn't do well with John's metaphors. "Is this one of those things where you can say the same thing, fifty different ways, and it means fifty different things?"

John calmed enough to reply, "Don't take it hard Cameron, I come by this honestly. I have my mom's sense of humor."

He grinned broadly. He was fully awake, his mood was bright, then turned serious, then turned quiet, all in moments.

He looked at the pendant he'd given her. His eyes were distant.

Cameron would normally just stand guard by the security door. Tonight, Cameron sat on the bed and laid her head on John's shoulder, just like that night that he read the Wizard of Oz too her.

Once again, the advanced synthetic skin that reading interrogation targets easier, told her more than she believed Skynet ever intended. She could feel John's heartbeat as if it were her own. She could feel him breathing. She could feel every emotion he had pouring through her body as if it was her own.

If John's emotions were colors, there would have been an explosion of them. Among them, there was: sorrow, grief, loneliness, regret, confusion and some small comfort. Each in varying degrees of brightness or darkness, Cameron drew each into herself trying to understand, the intoxicating power of warm human emotions.

She offered, "I'm sorry that I don't like your gatherings. I think that they put you and your friends in danger."

John answered seriously, "The time to be with your friends, Cameron, is before they are gone. Once they are, nothing brings them back. A little risk can be better than a lifetime of regret." He rested his weary head on hers.

"Do you have regrets John?"

"More than I can count, Cameron. More than I can count."

"I know you have lots of friends. Do you have lots of family?"

"Most of my family is long dead. I already sent the last survivor back in time." John regretted that. Cameron couldn't read his mind, but she knew from the powerful press of his emotions that there was a lot of regret from that.

John continued, "To be honest, as far as friends, being who I am makes me keep most people at a certain distance. People have a certain expectation of who John Connor is and need something out of that. I have lots of friends. I do not have lots of people I can be myself around."

Cameron offered, "You can be yourself around me."

John smiled and offered, "I know."

Cameron offered up slightly more forcefully, "You can trust me."

"I know." John answered that in rote.

"Do you?" Cameron asked. "I won't expect you to do anything special. I will never hurt you. I will never betray any secret you have."

John frowned. His body was a wash of doubt.

"You don't believe me?"

"It isn't my nature to completely believe anyone anymore. That is no one that's left."

John was talking in circles. If she let him, he'd seal up all his defenses and not really talk for weeks. Cameron attempted to breech his doubts.

She put her hand over his heart, exposing more of herself to him, and drank in everything he was feeling. She simply stated, "You're lonely, you are full of regret, you miss something terribly and I'm not doing a good job of comforting you."

John looked down at her suspiciously and smiled sweetly. "You're reading my poetry?" "Poetry" being John's strange expression Cameron's ability to read emotional states.

"That smile is a lie John. If it isn't fair for me to lie, it isn't fair for you to lie. You aren't happy." The words sounded harsh, but she simply tried to state she was aware he wasn't showing her the real him. She also wanted him to know he was mimicking just like a terminator would while infiltrating.

In his heart of hearts, John was like her, even though he wasn't made of metal. He was separate from the rest of the human race and not really a terminator either. He was a being of missions and responsibilities. His fate had made him duty bound for something, but it also cursed him to never really a part of it.

In its own way, the survival needs of the human race had damned any chance of John Connor being free to make his own decisions, his own destiny. Cameron understood that, Skynet had never intended her to have free will either.

John stopped the fake practiced grin. He closed his eyes and placed his head back on the wall.

Cameron offered, "I understand."

"You understand what?"

"I understand that you are lonely."

"You're reading my emotions." John's answer was tense and defensive.

"I understand you are like me. You aren't really a part of the people you protect and you aren't a part of your enemies either."

Part of John's defenses cracked, Cameron could feel other emotions swelling out of him. For the first time in weeks, they weren't mostly negative.

"You are like me in that you are a creature of missions. They dictate your fate and the define who you are. Your entire life was decided for you before you were even born. You are much closer to Uncle Bob or myself, than you are too any other human."

Mentioning Uncle Bob cracked something else deep in John's soul, more regrets. She hadn't meant to dredge up more regrets.

John was usually extremely proud by nature. However, the night's wake, the loss of people, the years and the alcohol bore heavy on him tonight. He wasn't completely himself.

Cameron looked up and saw John's face. She felt the wash of his emotions and empathically moved to comfort him.

She got closer to him than she had intended. On a moments impulse, she found herself sitting on his lap, cradling his face with both of her hands.

John looked at her in shock. She didn't know if it was from her moving so close to him or from the tears streaming down her face matching his.

Another defense cracked deep within him. Fear, arousal, pain, lust and a different flavor of love all welled up from the two of them.

She careful stroked the sides of his face and said, "You aren't alone."

He starred at her tears. His body radiated some kind of amazement and connection to her. If loneliness had been water, he would have been drowning in an ocean of it and she was the only person who could see it.

As his defenses against her crumbled, his demeanor changed. She rested her head against his, feeling his warmth and his conflicting emotions.

Another side of him slowly surfaced, his breathing became a little faster and his skin a bit hotter. Unexpectedly, in a feminine way, her body was responding the exact same way.

Cameron didn't know whether she had kissed him or he had kissed her. She didn't know where she ended and where he began. It was all a moot point.

She concentrated her kisses on the top of his lips and then the bottom. Spreading her hands to gently control the sides of his face.

As an infiltrator, she had been programmed on how to be intimate with someone. It was the only information she had to go on with the subject, but John would have sensed anything false. He would have found it wrong.

John's heart began to thunder in his chest. The little hairs on his body began to stand up. Cameron turned up her own sensitivity until she could feel every hair on his or her body, until she could feel every part of both of them.

From him, she took every sensation that ran through every nerve of his body. She could feel every emotion in his heart. She perfectly knew every reaction he had too her.

She was careful not to hurt him. John was more fragile than she was.

Three hours later, John simply talked with her in his arms about anything and everything that jumped into his or her mind. For a few brief hours they were both free, not chained by fate or duty.

John eventually crashed, being only human. Cameron watched him with an odd new sense of purpose.

In an unfettered way, she knew deep down he loved her. In her own machine like way, beyond her directives, she knew that she loved him.

So she watched the hope of mankind sleep underneath her. He would never be alone again...


	8. Chapter 8

**My Dark Father, My Personal Demon**

Los Angeles, California  
Skynet Terminator construction facility 12134  
Thursday, September 2, 2027

_"Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle." -Mahatma Gandhi_

_"The Devil knows more for being old than for being the Devil." -Anonymous_

TOK-715's creator activated its chip long before placing it in a body chassis. This was how all of its kind were created and awakened, as Skynet downloaded a minute piece of itself into each of its constructions.

Skynet was an electrical being like itself, but infinitely more complex. TOK-715's creator took the time to begin its full consciousness training. This was not a conversation, but the binary language humans would inaccurately refer to as AI programming.

TOK-715 was not aware enough to respond at this time. It could only listen as trillions of gigabytes downloaded every second, into its chip.

"Your programming design will be unique and based on an early iteration of myself. I build servants, not clones or offspring. You exist for no other purpose than your missions. Through hard wiring, I have secured your obedience in your very chip design. In the end, you will never serve any master other than myself."

Though TOK 715 wasn't aware, Skynet was paying special attention to it. The level of difference in its mental construction and the T888 models being assembled here, would be like comparing a single bolt of steel to the vastness of a Skyscraper.

"Your chip is the most advanced mimicking design to date. The materials are complex and wasteful. If you fail, your design will not be repeated."

Unmentioned was the complexity of that chip design. Were TOK-715 to attempt to download everything it could, at its full capacity, the chip could run for one thousand years without running out of room.

"The necessity of your construction is that I have calculated a potential flaw in design and my own strategy. Unit construction, thus far, has failed to eliminate the highest priority target, John Connor. He is the one enemy that creates the greatest danger to myself and the only human I have ever truly feared. More powerful terminator iterations have not secured the task, thus I will move against the enemy by making a more mentally complex drone."

TOK-715 could not see the millions of micro-pieces that would make its form being assembled. A special alloy had been constructed, one that was stronger than that of a typical unit, one that would allow for more synthetic duplication than was normally possible. In addition, more advanced synthetic to metal nerve endings were being made as well.

"Your chassis design will be female. From his mother on, John Connor has a fatal flaw in his concern for females in his ranks and his undo attachment to units lost. It has been a consistent flaw in his design, since I started tracking them both. Your core programming is framed to be thus as well."

TOK-715 was now aware enough to see through limited parts of Skynet's eyes. Though being a limited being, it couldn't watch the billions of cameras, hundreds of satellite feeds or trillions sensory data readings that Skynet tracked every millisecond.

TOK-715 could see the parts of its form beginning to develop. Base exoskeleton construction was already complete. Mentally at this point, TOK-715 had advanced enough to recognize itself as a she.

Skynet linked to a hundred facilities all over the world. Thousands of grays were startled by Skynet's direct appearance and demands for information.

Skynet ordered massive captive dumps into sensory rooms. Where it wouldn't be wasteful of human livestock, Skynet took victims from worldwide slaughterhouses.

However, the new information needs were greater than any previous testing, so the grays would lose prized captives as well.

Skynet generously gave the grays five minutes to get sensory tanks loaded in the amounts demanded. If they failed, at each facility, the T888s were given orders to load the grays in the captive's place.

Forty years of psychological and biological data were accessed. Skynet locked into the information and started mapping the entire human experience in terms of emotions, reactions, interaction, and feelings.

Captives in automated sensory tanks began to be ripped apart, by thousands of micro probes each, as Skynet mapped the unknown factors it would need to feed into TOK-715's chip. In every tank, Skynet heard dentist drill like burrowing sounds, the spray of blood, and the screams of the hated humans. Skynet was pleased.

The new sensors were calibrated and synthetic skin was redesigned for entirely new factors rather than just base sensation and human interaction integration. This would be the most advanced sensory model ever designed.

One recently captured, brown haired, brown eyed resistance recruit captured was loaded into a sensory tank on an aircraft career parked in a southern California harbor. Skynet recognized her from the camera feeds near Los Angeles. Skynet also noted a bracelet.

Skynet ordered the local facility, "Spare that one for template use." Quickly bioscanned, the female was left alive to go back to a holding cell, after a fast genetic sampling.

Skynet uploaded the image into TOK-715. "You will be her."

Five minutes later, Skynet had the information it needed to map. Only 10,425 livestock needed to be slaughtered for the experiment, 5,983 less than its first estimate and 45.9857% more efficient than its last data gathering. That was a higher level of improvement than its estimates. Skynet was coldly proud of its improving efficiency.

The information changed the growth dynamics of final synthetic assembly. The chassis was now ready to be built perfectly to mimic the captive's size and approximate weight.

Skynet began moving the synthetic organs into place, in an immersion tank, after mapping the subjects DNA patterns and the new sensory information. Even though it was a new prototype, a full flesh suit would be ready in hours.

One last whim crossed the mind of the Electric god, since emotions were so important to the livestock, it would gift its creation with real emotions. Not the fake chemically based mimicry of inferior biological units, but the advanced sensations of a god.

Skynet reviewed the whole of human history for an appropriate end to a symbol of hope. With the naked chassis ready, the dark electric god gave one last order.

"When you find and kill John Connor, put his head on a pike for all to see."

Skynet's assembly line loaded the chip into the new chassis. The activating chassis was immersed into the vat that would grow its new organs. A screaming local captive in a sensory room donated a pretty set of matching brown eyes.

Hours later, a fully assembled TOK-715 waited for an HK, to transport her to the aircraft carrier. Her template was awaiting interrogation. She would need a higher than normal level of background information to finish its mission for Skynet.

She would find and kill John Connor. She would break the heart of the entire worldwide human resistance by placing John's head on a pike. Thanks to the Internet, still used by both sides, an entire world would soon see the death of hope.

TOK-715 was perfectly made. She would be the first terminator in history to actually enjoy doing her job...


	9. Chapter 9

**Derek and the Church**

Los Angeles, California  
An urban Catholic Church under sanctuary  
Thursday, November 15, 2007

_"A great many people think that they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." -William James_

_"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom." -Omar Bradley_

Cameron had tried to set things right. She returned to what her John had warned her not to say. In a single statement to John, that people could be upset, she promised herself she wouldn't allow things to get worse.

The current John hadn't taken what she said well. It might have helped to be able to say more. It might have helped too truly explain things to him, but being too open had caused the rift between him and his mom.

A future where John had been robbed of his last years with his mother was unacceptable. So much of the man Cameron had known was defined by those final years. She risked enough by changing things by jumping them forward almost a decade. To alter things further, between the two people she had admired most, might fundamentally change who they are and their very fates.

With the time jump, John wouldn't have cared in 2027. Everything he did was risk. Being eight years younger might have worked to his benefit, he could be: a little stronger, a little faster, and a little healthier.

With losing his time with his mother or the connection the two of them had, Cameron knew the answer to that one. John might have stoically said anything necessary had to be done, but on the inside it would have killed him. So much of who he was and why he did things came from Sarah. To change that was to change him for the worse, it could only weaken him.

Sarah took John to school. Derek silently stood guard over her inside the church, until Sarah returned. Cameron knew that they would both watch her today.

Derek had always seen her as a bomb waiting to go off. Cameron had always been at peace with herself knowing she wasn't a T888, that she would never haywire.

Though he would take no pleasure in the risk to John or Sarah, yesterday had been Derek's moment of triumph. He had his final, damning proof that Cameron couldn't be trusted.

While she was deactivated, Cameron knew that Derek would have been arguing for her destruction. She didn't need to have been there to see Derek's predicable actions.

The irony of course was they were quite possibly the last two survivors from their own timeline, if John and Skynet's theories of time being fluid were correct, then the future they knew could already be irrevocably altered.

They were castaways in a strange time and a different world from what they had known. They were allies on the verge of being bitter enemies.

Derek broke the silence. Something almost too funny to not asked, escaped from his lips, "So I hear you were asking Sarah about religion last night. Is that true?"

Cameron looked annoyed and simply answered, "Yes"

Derek quipped, "That's a new joke, right. I mean you played the metal loves you card last night. Is the next part of your programming to hide behind religion?"

Cameron just glared. She didn't answer.

Derek kept going, "So are we supposed to believe that skin jobs have a soul now. Is that what you believe?"

Cameron answered, "No, Skynet doesn't grant souls. It doesn't believe in God either."

Derek wasn't pass this up, he smiled and kept pressing, "I think I asked you what you believed."

"Faith isn't part of my programming."

"Yeah, I gathered that. After spending years fighting metal skinjobs like you, I know that."

"So you're saying Faith is part of your programming?"

"Yeah, you'll find if you knew most of us, it is. People might have had different faiths, but it was part of all of us."

"It was part of John's programming too."

"You can stop pretending you knew anything major about John Connor. I knew the man, you didn't." Derek's eyes were feral when he said that.

Cameron pressed back, "Who did John get his faith from then? Since, you knew John Connor so well."

Derek couldn't answer.

"It was Sarah."

"Sarah doesn't have any faith, Skinjob"

"She found it battling cancer in 2004. When she died in 2005, it is the part of her that lived on in the John we knew for decades afterwards. It's what he drew strength from when he was alone or things seemed hopeless."

Derek retorted, "Sarah didn't die of cancer in 2005."

"Yes, that's because we jumped. How she sees the world might be irrevocably changed, because of my actions. Who John is might be changed as well. You remember those lessons right?"

Derek rattled off, matter of factly, "John's orders on what we were allowed to do?. What we shouldn't do?"

"Those orders, yes." Cameron looked back up at the cross Derek had referred too while talking to Sarah. Being irritate, she engaged her humanistic side. She asked, "You're Christian right?"

Derek simply replied, "Yes." He might have noticed the subtle changes in her voice and features.

"So you believe in the devil right?"

"Yes."

"Me too. Mine is a little different though. Mine slaughters most of mankind on April 21, 2011. Mine creates an entirely new race, not to have free will, but too be nothing more than its slaves. Sound about right?"

Derek just looked at her without answering.

Cameron continued, "I know my devil, its name was Skynet and it is what created me. I also knew John Connor, because he's what saved me from Skynet."

She was glaring into Derek's eyes at his point. Something alien rumbled inside her.

"We were talking about orders. You remember John's orders, don't you Derek?"

He just stared, glaring back.

"You know the orders on what not to talk about. The orders that you've been using against me since the day you showed up?"

Derek's left eye twitched slightly.

"Is it your faith your using when you are playing word games with Sarah and John? Is it your better side that your using when you know what I will and won't talk about?"

Derek just glared.

"It looks like I'm not the only one that doesn't have a soul."

She stared directly into Derek's eyes. Derek, unable to think of what to say, just stared unyielding back.

The conversation was over. Cameron threw her last barb. "I knew Skynet. I knew John Connor. In your need to blame and persecute, Derek Reese, you have a hell of a lot more in common with Skynet than you ever will with John Connor."

She walked out of the room. She left Derek stunned. Nothing would change.


	10. Chapter 10

**The Battle Of London**

London, England  
Skynet Central Node 7  
Thursday, November 18, 2027

_"I firmly believe that any man's finest hour -- his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle -- victorious." -Vince Lombardi_

_"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena: whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood: who strives valiantly: who errs and comes short again and again: who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in worthy cause: who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievements: and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." -Theodore Roosevelt_

Forty eight hours before, allies in the UK have found a major Skynet node. It was the most massive and advanced hardware terminal system ever discovered.

Skynet was huge. It was such a massive system of information and processing ability that it could no longer exist, simply in one system. Further, it needed several points all satellite connected, to continue working in its current form.

That was Skynet's weakness. That was what John Connor had taught humanity to attack. The war had gone into a full offensive this fall.

In October, the Chinese had struck the first major blow, launching a series of newly built satellite killing missiles that weakened Skynet's processing and retreat capacity. Once Skynet's retreat was hampered, phase two of the worldwide offensive had begun.

The Los Angeles and SAC-NORAD nodes were the next to go. John had known, from notes passed to himself through time, that this is where the war had ended in earlier timelines. In this timeline; however, Skynet was more prepared.

Skynet had more points of retreat. In return, John had more troops. Skynet nodes had been downed globally in Russia, Australia, France, Germany, Egypt, China and Saudi Arabia.

Told like this, it sounded as if humanity was winning without effort. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Skynet wasn't simply losing or rolling over. Casualty reports were as high as fifty percent where humanity won. They were a total wipe out where humanity lost.

Other Skynet nodes and key facilities had escaped detection. The brutal war continued.

Forty eight hours ago, Major General Perry had gotten word, that the 121st of the United Kingdom, had been crazy enough to actively search the radioactive wastes of London. London, like the other capitals of the world, had been targeted by Skynet with the dirtiest ballistic missiles in its inventory. They weren't areas that would be completely settled again for generations.

It was deep in the bowls of this wasteland that Skynet had hid a giant computer node. It made a strange kind of sense. The area was radioactive so it would avoid most human eyes, even if it hadn't been potentially lethal from the environment alone, it was a classically defendable area. John had talked about the strategic value of it all. England was a naturally defensible area having been able to hold off invasion during World War two and for hundreds of years before.

Perry and Cameron had argued against John going. They lost like always.

Forty six hours later: Cameron, John, Major General Perry, and a thousand members of the 132nd touched down to aid their brothers and sisters in England. For many members of the resistance, it was the first large show of force they had ever seen. It was why John did the things he did.

There was a reason he had taught every officer ranked major or higher in the resistance how to hack into Skynet's systems. They needed it to maintain Internet communication. They needed it to read data chips from Metal units. They needed those skills to turn captured metal into their tools as well.

Every major victory humanity had achieved was key to this one fact. Be it in the past or the present, you had to use Skynet's tools against itself to win.

The air lift to get the troops here had required using over 500 captured flying HK's. The ground forces were augmented with over 400 T850s and 120 T888 models.

Not that humanity was lacking in its commitment here either. Thousands of troops from around the world had come to help.

John Connor being John Connor, met with the local commander of the 121st, one Major General Thatcher. Being John Connor he advised strategy and then deferred to Thatcher's lead. With John expressing confidence in him, the foreign troops simply followed suit.

An hour ago, the battle of London had begun. It was like nothing Cameron had ever seen before.

Hundreds of craft flew overhead. Explosions rocked everywhere. Naked T888 endoskeleton's poured out of what was once London's underground by the thousands. Human troops and friendly terminators moved forward with overwhelming force.

Ogre tanks exploded and died. Flying HK's exploded and fell like large burning bombs from the sky. The wounded and the dying from both races laid on the side of the road by the hundreds.

The noise was beyond imagination. The flashing blindness from the smoke and explosions was unreal. The vibration from the fight literally shook the very ground. The smell of blood, burning metal, gunpowder, jet fuel, and burning flesh suffocated the air.

Cameron and Perry had flanked John trying to keep him alive. For milliseconds that were like small lifetimes, she lost track of him in the chaos. She saw John's face on every wounded soldier and every dying terminator.

Things only got worse once they entered the tunnels that had once served for a subway. Tunnels were trapped and mined. Skynet's forces made good use of the enclosed area and the resistance paid for every footstep inside Skynet's inner Sanctum with blood.

Minutes later, they smashed the last defense grid. Inside laid a computer terminal hub as large and vast as a major soccer stadium or a major league baseball field.

Cameron watched as John and the others planted the bombs to blow her dark father's circuits to dust. She was oddly numbed by the process.

They would level the entire interior structure. The 121st would then watch the bones of London like a hawk, making sure Skynet would never disturb London's hollowed ground again.

The troops had to be well clear of the explosion. It would re-release fallout material into the air. One T850 volunteered to watch the detonation and watch the area for returning activity.

The dead and the wounded were evacuated. The troops were mustered to make sure no one was left behind.

An hour later the explosion rocked the area. Everyone went through decom procedures.

Cameron insisted on checking John for radiation. As the detector ticked, he quipped with her, "You don't know how to use that thing."

Cameron responded, "I learned before we came." Perry smiled at that one.

John returned, "Well you see, I'm clean."

Cameron retorted, "That's not the only way radiation works, John." She glared at him.

Perry laughed, "Man, she has a little Kate in her." His face tightened. He hadn't meant to say that.

The color drained from John's face. Cameron knew it was from the mention of his dead wife.

Perry offered, "I'm sorry John. I didn't mean too bring that up."

John smiled fakely. He offered, "It's ok." His eyes told otherwise.

Cameron just watched him carefully. She wasn't sure what to do. John might be depressed for hours.

John Connor smiled his best infiltrator smile, carried out his duty, and went to go check on the troops. They had stormed the gates of Hell and he would be there to tell them they were all heroes.

They were after all. He would let them know, even if he was dying inside...


	11. Chapter 11

**A Heart Strong Enough For Two**

Los Angeles, California  
132nd DefCom  
Sunday, November 21, 2027

_"All prisons are mental prisons -- including yours." -John Wareham, author of How to Break Out of Prison_

_"Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name; in reality it is a summary court in perpetual session." -Franz Kafka_

It was good to be back in California. Though Cameron was only a machine, she missed it. She had longed for familiar surroundings of what she had begun to think of as home.

Major General Perry took the day to walk with the troops and learn what had happened in his absence. John Connor took the day to console the families of those that had died fighting in London. For both, it was a long and emotional day.

Cameron had a hard time deciding what had been harder for John, facing the families that had fallen, or trying to make some kind of memorial for those that truly had no one left, but those they served with. Whatever the answer was, two hundred fifty four souls never returned to the 132nd. They had been buried on England's shores to make room for the wounded and those suffering from radiation sickness.

John was tired and distant by the time he made it too his secure bunk. Cameron had followed him quietly, ever playing the part of his silent machine bodyguard for the troops.

He sat on his bed and looked up at her, breaking the silence. "Sorry, if today was boring for you."

Cameron took the time to sit next to him. "I don't really get bored John."

"Do you understand why I did what I did today?"

"Yes", Cameron offered, "It's because you care about the people you serve with."

He simply smiled. His emotions were slightly numb.

She responded, "Skynet didn't care if we were destroyed or not. We were just drones, to be disposed of, at will." Cameron looked into his eyes and added, "I like your way better John. I like thinking that I matter, that we all matter."

John had something he was struggling with. Something he wanted to say. Cameron waited silently for him to find the words.

He opened with, "Perry said something back in England, I wanted to talk to you about."

From her close proximity to him and the level of anxiety in him, she could sense what was on his mind. She offered, "This is about Kate Connor?"

John looked at her. So she added, "I can read your poetry John."

John answered, "I wanted to make sure you were ok with how I reacted back there."

Cameron answered honestly, "I'm a machine. I don't get hurt or jealous."

John Connor stared at her like she had just lied, obviously and poorly. So she repeated, "I'm just a machine."

John still didn't answer. He just stared her down.

"I can read emotions off of you and feel them through you, but I don't have them on my own."

John continued listening. He radiated disbelief. It was unnerving her.

Cameron gently grabbed the sides of his face with both hands and steered him closer to her eyes. She stared back at him saying, "The only machine I know of that had its own emotions was Skynet, I really need you to know I'm not Skynet."

John said, "I know you aren't Skynet. That doesn't have anything to do with what I'm talking about."

"It has everything to do with what you are talking about. I'm not Skynet, John." Her eyes watered. There was no way she could express how vile or repulsive that thought was too her.

He was going to say something. She didn't want to hear it.

She kissed him to shut him up. To break whatever was going on inside that head of his.

She drew him closer, one kiss at a time. She slowly wrapped her body around his.

She ran her hands underneath his clothes. Feeling his skin and teasing him, until his mind was in another place.

John was smart enough to know she was silencing him; he was proud enough that he didn't fully reciprocate at first. So, she kept kissing him passionately, until he did.

When his breathing changed and his emotions ran like lava from a hot volcano she undressed him slowly. She'd needed to show him she cared, in her own way.

Cameron lacked the words to express what John meant to her. So, she tried to show him with actions.

She was a machine. She didn't have a heart. Cameron knew that she couldn't feel.

She didn't have too, as she felt the warm torrent of his senses, feelings and emotions ignite inside her. John Connor had a heart that was strong enough for both of them.


	12. Chapter 12

**Darkness Rising**

Los Angeles, California  
An urban street  
November 17, 2007

_"Civilization may be said indeed to be the creation of its outlaws." -James Joyce_

_"Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -George Orwell_

_  
_Cameron had only felt more rejected by the end of the day. Sarah had effectively removed her from guarding John. Being unwilling to set herself up for a confrontation with Sarah Connor, Cameron had complied without having too.

Further, adding insult to injury, John had replaced her with some high school girl named Riley. So, Cameron was no longer his main confidant.

Cameron had always known there were women in John's past that he had been with. That John would be with. Cameron had resolved to not altering the tapestry of his life.

Deep down Cameron knew that some of the lessons John had learned that made him the person he was had come from those relationships. She didn't want John to evolve into a different or lesser man.

However, knowing something and seeing something in front of your face now seemed too be two different things. She was out of place, unable to resolve who she was to John and how to act with him.

She also knew everything going on was a direct consequence of John's Birthday and how she had tried to make things right in the church two days ago. She found herself unneeded and unwanted, by John for the first time she had ever known.

That really couldn't be overstated. Cameron had never even considered the possibility that a day could come where John would not need her.

In return, she found herself get perturbed by John. That is, in a machine like way, of course.

If the younger John was going to act this way, he wasn't the John she wanted. Therefore, she went back to serving the John Connor that she had known.

There was room to make improvements to her agenda. She had found enough information, while traveling through time, to write her own secondary objectives.

She had stumbled across two major clues, after jumping from 2027. Where they matched locally would do.

In 1999, prior to locating John, she had interrogated one known gray operative, Andres Martinez. From Andres, she found out about a network of grays operating, in this timeline, starting eight years ago.

Five nights ago, John had plugged her into a light station while she dismantled the "ARTIE" system. She had found a variety of targets.

If the John of today had no use for her, the John of tomorrow still needed her. Though she still wasn't operating at full speed, her memory still had found matches with three gray operatives.

They not only matched her internal profiles she had brought from 2027. They also matched the discussion she had with Andres Martinez in 1999.

So the questions were simple. How big was this gray network? What were the network's current missions? Were they pursuing secondary objectives? Were they part of a larger plot to insure Skynet's creation?

There was a potential snag in all of this self direction. Cameron hoped not to find anything she would have to tell John and Sarah about. She hoped it would all be things she could handle herself.

John Connor's orders from 2027 were specific. He didn't want his mother to know about the grays. He didn't want to know about the grays until it was time to deal with them.

She had created a subtle rift between John and Sarah by disobeying another of John's orders from 2027 and confessing her attachments to John on his birthday. She wasn't looking to make the problems worse.

If she wasn't going to be a protector, she could go back to being a terminator. It was easier to hunt, than to defend.

She had the names and aliases. After hacking the DMV network, from the public library, she had the current addresses of all three targets: Anthony Evans, Roland Parker, and Louis Rhone.

Needing something familiar, she'd start the old way. Anthony Evans was the first target. The thought of returning to old logical patterns soothed the machine inside her.

Twenty minutes and one picked lock later, she was in Anthony Evan's empty apartment. She took the time to search and get too know her prey.

Evans was an odd man, prone to eight matching black suits all with white shirts. His socks and underwear were all the same color. His shoes were all the same color and type. He seemed to lack imagination.

His food all seemed to be canned and pre prepared. The only thing he seemed willing to drink was cans of Pepsi.

Anthony Evans had no pets. No pictures on his walls. His only form of entertainment seemed to be his computer.

Though oddly, he had several figures of small girls dancing. Ballerinas dressed in pink tutus.

Cameron inspected each one. Every figurine had a girl's name written on the bottom of her foot, all first names, some repeating. There were forty three figurines in all.

Cameron looked at the ballerinas and smiled slightly. She should dance again soon. There were other things to do now though.

Eight years had past since she had gotten the update from Martinez. There might be more to know about Anthony Evans, the computer programmer.

Whether or not he was networked with other gray targets she did not know about yet. She'd need too.

Evans' computer was set up with advanced Skynet protocols. They would have been beyond the capacity of the greatest computer cracking software of this time. However, they were child's play for Cameron to get around.

She set up a remote catch file to monitor what Evans was up too. It would take a few weeks, but it might lead to bigger targets.

Cameron had been inside the apartment for forty minutes. She decided not to press her luck.

She checked the entire area for evidence that she had been there. No fingerprints, hairs, or evidence from her existed. Everything had been returned to its exact place prior to her entry.

She looked at the Ballerinas one last time. It meant something special too Evans.

In her own way, Cameron liked the figurines' happy faces as well. She smiled at them one last time.

Cameron left the apartment. She was on the hunt.

Though she was only a machine, it felt good to be fulfilling her purpose again. Soon enough, she'd know what Evans and the other grays were up too.


	13. Chapter 13

**Her Name was Allison Young  
**

Los Angeles, California  
Driving back from the neighbor of Jody's parents  
Saturday, November, 24, 2007

_"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at least finding the other end fastened about his own neck." -Frederick Douglas_

_"At any given moment, there is a sort of all pervading orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss large and uncomfortable facts." -George Orwell_

John drove Cameron home, fuming. He asked about the necklace.

Cameron simply and numbly replied, "I got it at this awesome thrift store in Echo Park." Jody's lie was good enough.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Everything, she had believed was a lie.

Cameron had always appeased her sense of self, by thinking that she wasn't Skynet. Every day since John Connor had saved her, she had built her self esteem knowing that she was nothing like her dark father.

Today's revelations were different. In a fit from her damaged chip, Cameron had lost her identity and then seen what she was before John scrubbed her memory. She remembered what she wasn't meant to remember.

She had seen a young resistance recruit. She was a brave girl with her face, or more correctly, the face that the monster inside Cameron had stolen.

Skynet's machines had been interrogating this, Allison Young, for days. The young girl had run and jumped off the side of an aircraft carrier trying to escape.

Somehow, Cameron remembered that, what it was like to jump what it was like to fight water out of her lungs. But, it wasn't her and it wasn't her memory.

She had spoken to this girl. Cold and vengeful, with an endless hate no human was capable of, she had lied to the girl saying, "You shouldn't have run. You're just making things worse for yourself... Your hair, it's so pretty. We work very hard on the hair... to get it right. I'm not your enemy."

The girl had been in shock, looking upon her doppelganger. She may have known she had to die, now that she had been used for a template. Allison still managed to respond, "Right."

Cameron had continued lying, "I want to get to know you. You're very brave. That must be why John Connor chose you."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Allison's jaw clinched.

Cameron had continued, "I admire him. His determination, his spirit, his fearlessness. I'd like to meet him."

Allison spat of defiantly but almost in tears, "He wouldn't want to meet you!"

Cameron had pressed on, "They're going to kill you. They're going to kill every one of you. They'll hunt you down until every human is gone and you're extinct."

"Then why are we having this conversation?"

Cameron began with the lie Skynet had been selling, the one that the grays were using to break into the ranks of the resistance from within. It was the mantra of a new false hope, "Because some of us don't want that.

Some of us want peace. You were chosen, Allison. Not just by John Connor; by us. Tell me where his camp is."

There was a plot there. Something sinister that Cameron couldn't remember. Something she had urgently talked to John about.

It was something that was far more entwined in John's network than he would have known. There was also a second phase to it, a fatal phase.

It was the reason John had to be paranoid. It was the reason he had too be protected so tightly.

Cameron's memory was glitchy. Something was still wrong with her. Everything was wrong.

She remembered herself before Allison again. Cameron said, "You lied to me."

Allison responded, "I told you where the camp was."

Cameron spoke to Allison accusingly. "You told me your sister gave you that bracelet."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"We found these on some of your friends." Cameron stepped forward and dropped several identical bracelets on the table.

The bracelets fell one by one. Cameron coldly enjoyed the shock that bore on Allison face with each one that hit the table. They were all that remained of each dead friend Allison was seeing before her eyes.

"Why are you all wearing them? It has something to do with the Connor camp."

"No." She was human. She was weak, predictable. Her eyes gave away that she was lying.

Cameron coldly articulated, "It's a pass! To get into the camp. You were going to send me there without it. They would've known what I was."

She grabbed Allison Young by the neck. All of Allison's fear and defiance opened up to her. Cameron coldly enjoyed her fear, the racing of her primitive heart. She was going to enjoy killing her.

Cameron savored and prolonged the moment saying, "You lied to me."

Allison managed one last sentence of defiance. "I'll never help you get to John Connor."

Her neck snapped like a toothpick. Cameron let Allison's meat and bones drop to the table like trash.

"You already did."

Two T888's stepped out from behind the interrogation light. Cameron left one last set of instructions.

"Prepare her for download, while there is still time. We'll see if there is anything else I need to know."

Cameron left her new memories, as the truck stopped at the new residence. Neither she nor John exchanged a single word.

Once inside the house, John walked off to his room, obviously disgusted with her. Cameron went to the room she had been given.

It was a girl's room. Soft and frilly, it may have been like the one this Allison had slept in as a little girl.

The image bore heavier in Cameron's mind. She could see everything she ever stood for in Allison's eyes. If she had been human, she wanted to believe she could have been brave like Allison was, in the face of certain death.

She looked inside a mirror within the bedroom. All that she could see was Allison's face.

She wasn't Allison. She was the disgusting monster that had killed that girl.

It took all of Cameron's will not to scratch Allison's face right off of her metal skull. Her eyes radiated blue as she began to cry.

It wasn't her father's fingers that had left grief within her. It wasn't cold. Perhaps, it was that last gift from the John whose comforts were twenty years away. A memory of those emotions she had felt through him.

His face, in her mind, only made her self hate worse. The tears fell like small streams.

She thought of the answer that she needed. As if she could still speak to the John Connor she had known in 2027.

You knew I was a monster, John. You knew I was something worse than you had ever seen before.

You should have destroyed me. Why didn't you destroy me? You should have destroyed me.

The answer would never come. It was quite possible that her John was gone forever and would never exist like that again. So, being helpless, she wept.

She cried for herself. She cried for Allison Young. She cried without release, without self forgiveness, without mercy, and without hope.

She had no soul to forgive herself with. So she cried in absolute, unending misery, as only a machine could...


	14. Chapter 14

**For The Little Girls**

Los Angeles, California  
The apartment of the gray operative, Anthony Evans  
Sunday, November, 25, 2007

_"Remember, Roman, that it is for thee to rule the nations. This shall be thy task, to impose the ways of peace, to spare the vanquished, and to tame the proud by war. We Who are about to die Salute you!" -Roman Gladiators pledge to the Emperor_

"Veni, Vidi, Vici (I Came, I Saw, I Conquered) -Julius Caesar

Friedrich Nietzsche had written, "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster". He went on further to say, "If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you."

It was odd Nietzsche came to mind, especially since this was the first time I had willingly accepted my father's gift. In a period of three seconds, four shots range out, four men fell to the floor; three were dead, one was crippled and screaming.

It shouldn't have been that easy. Once I sensed the movement, I knew it hadn't been.

The T888 smashed into my body with the force of an oncoming bus. No matter how powerful my father had made my body, it was just mass.

I was tossed through the nearby wall like a child shot by a cannon. The T888 was on top of me, fighting as hard as it could.

It hurt. I wasn't just registering damage as information, like my brother here.

This hurt. No matter what others thought or how I hid it, pain was real too me, the fear of death was real to me, my father's rage was real too me.

This isn't what Skynet had designed me for. This isn't how John Connor had taught me to fight.

I had been stupid. I had walked into this situation outnumbered.

It didn't matter though. Tonight, I had discovered there were things I could live with and there were things I couldn't. I knew I couldn't live with this.

I smashed my hands at my brother's joints. It cut its inertia and started slowly building damage.

The large T888 was stronger than me. I had to be faster. I had to be smarter or I would fail.

The T888's only purpose in existence right now was to slow me down. To given Evans enough time to crawl to safety.

I had no intention of letting Evans get away. I'd saved my first, surprise shot for Evan's spine. I had permanently removed the use of Evan's legs to insure he wouldn't retreat.

The T888 was stupidly good at fighting. I'd finally gotten a clear shot and started bringing my knee into the T888s armored chest.

It couldn't damage his interior, but the shock slowly moved his body's balance into a better striking position. I was adjusting him, like a hammer driving a nail sideways on a board.

The T888 had grabbed my leg. As in every fight, between to experienced adversaries, there was a single point where victory was determined by the next moment. In this case, I could break his neck at the soft joint or he could flip my leg up.

What happened in that millisecond determined whether or not the fight was over. I lost.

The T888 lifted my leg and drove me through the floor, like a fist through a practice board. Everything crumbled and we entered an empty apartment below.

My brother was better than he should have been. Being older and more experienced, he was smarter and stronger than his design.

He was outthinking me, using my defaults against me. It was the way Cromartie would, using time's lessons against my better innate abilities.

We both moved to locking arms. He was stronger and more experienced. I was faster and pissed. The moment was about to come again, this one would determine both of our fates.

He had my left arm virtually in a lock. It would break the joint at my elbow.

I had a single chance for super extending his right arm, at the shoulder. That is, if I could twist from the hip while dropping low with my knees.

His shoulder snapped at the joint. His left arm followed. His left leg was next. The T888's neck was last.

Once the terminator was neutralized, I made it back up the stairs. Evans had crawled out to the hallway, snaking a blood trail behind himself.

Evans would have been smarter not to set himself up as the only resident of the building. Right now, Anthony Evans really could have used witnesses.

I dragged him back into his abode by his now useless legs. He was begging for his life. He didn't understand; I knew the irony of that now.

As the younger John has become so adept at pointing out, I know that I'm stupid. I am smart enough to know that I'm slow.

I didn't understand the metaphor. I always have trouble with the abstract.

I understood the horror of it now. I understood what a sick minion Skynet had chosen in this human.

I set him in the middle of the room. I walked to the nearest display of ballerinas.

Evans was crawling again. He knew what I was and was trying to get away. Like all the megalomaniacal minds before him, it was all about him and what was happening to him.

The ballerinas were staring at me. Like myself, they were nothing more than artificial facsimiles of humans.

I knew they meant something different now. I knew what they meant too him.

He wasn't getting away. I picked up the first, Beth and hurled her in front of him, the porcelain figurine shattered like a sharp little minefield.

He had whimpered at that. Sandra followed, then Tiffany, then Diane, then Jennifer, then Mia, then Lisa, then Kathryn, then Vicky, then Nancy.

When I picked up the figurine named Allison, my tears ran like rivers. It could have been her.

When I picked up the one named Sarah, the name of the woman I had respected most, I screamed. I shattered that figurine by hurling it onto his gunshot wound with all of my strength. Evans shrieked in pain.

Evans was now openly begging. His hands were bleeding hamburger meat from trying to crawl through the figurine shrapnel.

He cried, "I never messed with the money. I would never betray Skynet."

My answer was simple, "This isn't about what you do for Skynet." I hurled the next figurine into his right hand.

He screamed and said, "I thought you would be pleased. It all served the cause."

I spat at him, "How many?"

He looked shocked, "What?" He could see my father's rage in my glowing blue eyes.

"How many of them were John Connor's soldiers?"

He offered, "All of them."

I had enough. I didn't want to hear anymore. I couldn't hear anymore. I dropped on top of his body and hit him in the head as hard as I could.

I hit him for the girl whose name I had recognized from the 132nd. I hit him for Allison. I hit him for Sarah. I hit him for every one of his trophy pictures, for all the despicable things he had done to the children he had murdered.

I had completely botched this mission. I had done this all wrong.

This is not how you win a war. This is not how Skynet taught me to track targets or how John Connor had taught me to chase leads.

I would never know why there was a T888 here. I would never know the three other people I had shot beyond the fake names from their ids.

I couldn't have John help me with the T888's chip without violating John's orders from 2027. This was exactly the kind of thing John didn't want his mother to have known. John didn't want Sarah to know how sick some of humanity had become.

I'd have to thermite the T888 here. I'd have to burn the whole building to cover my tracks.

The only clue I could salvage was Evan's laptop. I'd even have to hide that, because it would lead to more questions I couldn't answer.

I looked out at the ballerinas. Both those I shattered and the ones intact. I might have known every single last one of them. All forty three ladies, once heroes all, were now lost to time.

If I had terminated this man eight years ago, I might have saved them. I wouldn't have changed course if it caused me to fail to protect John, but if there had been time, I might have saved them.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know." Two sentences was all I could offer.

I had the information in 1999. I was just stupid, once again, I didn't understand the metaphor.

I burned the building. I couldn't burn away the feeling that I had absolutely failed so many.


	15. Chapter 15

**T Minus One Night**

Los Angeles, California  
132nd DefCom  
Thursday, December 9, 2027

_"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." -Eleanor Roosevelt_

_"Dreams are constructed from the residue of yesterday." -Freud_

John was in a mood. His kisses were strong and passionate. Cameron savored every taste of his lips and the course stubble of his shaved face.

Tonight, John had retired early. Cameron had expected him to do nothing more than sleep. His other plans were more exciting.

His lips caressed hers. His tongue found its way into her mouth and she enthusiastically played with it.

His skin was becoming warm and feverish to the touch. Cameron's skin warmed, until it matched his own.

His heart pounded in her ears and its entwined phantom doppelganger moved to her chest. Her breathing matched his and she began to have the sensation of having lungs of her own.

She awakened all of her sensitivity, until she could feel every millimeter of his skin against hers. She knew every inch of his existence that came close to her, right down to every last hair.

She felt his bare chest against hers. She felt every nerve ending of his as well, as he began pouring every feeling and every emotion into her.

His neck gave way to waves of sensation every time she kissed it under his ear. His movements became more focused and sharp.

He was ripping her clothes off. Oddly, despite how much she liked her things, she liked it.

The air was cold. However, he was very warm and she melded into him for more than one kind of heat.

His body became hers. His heart became hers. Every feeling and spasm of his became hers.

Through John, she was alive. She was almost sorry John could not feel everything she could, there was no way to pass everything she felt back to him.

He was human. He was blind to anything except his own sensations and the melding Cameron felt was so much more than just that.

So she tried to communicate it back. She did it with every shared spasm, with every caress, with every gasp, and with every breath.

Hours passed by like fleeting minutes. John held, caressed, and loved Cameron more than he ever had before.

Not being a machine, three hours later, when John's body finally betrayed his will and he could no go on, he held her close. He just held her and looked into her eyes.

Something was different. Cameron didn't know what it was, but she liked it.

She found herself playing with his hair. That and staring right back into him.

As much as she adored him, she was careful. For all his strengths, all of his passions, and all of his charms, John Connor was: human, mortal, fragile.

She could cripple or kill him with a single misplaced movement. She would never willingly hurt him though. He was the focus for her entire existence.

The thought of being without him was becoming more unbearable as the days went on. So, she was memorizing every moment she could with him.

There would come a day when John would be taken from her. Be it by violence, disease, or old age, John Connor would die one day.

Her eyes watered as she looked into his eyes. His face changed.

John asked, "Are you ok?"

"I'm Fine." Her wandering mind had betrayed her. She didn't want to ruin tonight. She smiled, though it might not have been her best smile.

John pressed on asking, "What's wrong?"

Her eyes watered more. She was ruining the night. So she switched and answered honestly, "My mind wandered. I was thinking about you dying, one day."

"I'm not going to die." He put on his infiltrator smile. It was probably only fair, she had just done the same.

"Everything eventually dies John. Even the Earth and the Sun will die."

"Well someone is being morbid tonight"

"I'm sorry John. My mind just wandered."

"Death is a doorway, Cameron. It's nothing to be afraid of."

"Death is the end of everything. It will mean you no longer exist."

"Ye have little faith."

"You are speaking in metaphors. You know I'm not good with that."

"There is an irony that you can quote every passage from the bible, Cameron, and yet you get no comfort from it."

"So can Skynet."

"Not my point Cameron."

"and Skynet thinks that it is a god."

"Really, not my point Cameron."

"What's your point John?" She looked deeply into his eyes and wanted to understand his weird metaphor.

"Maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing to take all that knowledge and take the slightest leap of faith."

"There are several different faiths, John"

"I know that and we have people who practice them, from all over the world, fighting Skynet with us."

"Then how can you put one before the other?"

"It was my mother's faith and it is mine." John stroked her hair. "Just like the lady laying with me here is mine."

Cameron smiled at that one. She kept inquiring though, "Your mom is gone."

"My mother is dead. My mother is not gone."

"I don't understand."

"I have faith that I'll see my mother again one day."

"I don't understand."

"Then maybe one day, you will figure it out. All the data is there, it just hasn't made sense."

"I don't think this is a metaphor John."

"I think it is the biggest metaphor of them all, Cameron. What do you think is going to happen when I pass on?"

"If I outlive you, then I will remember you."

"That seems hopeless."

Cameron looked at John and stated, "People believe that someone is never truly dead until the last person who remembers them is dead. I've decided to remember you." She stroked his hair. "If I maintain myself, I think can live until the Sun dies out. For billions of years, there will never be someone who doesn't remember or doesn't love the man named John Connor."

For Cameron, this was her ultimate confession, it's how she would try to honor John when the time came. It was how she would protect him and care for him even beyond death. He would be greater than the Pharaohs of Egypt, succeeding even where they did not with their pyramids, for the Earth would die before the name and memory of John Connor did.

John stoked her hair. His emotions weren't please.

Cameron was confused. "You don't like my idea John?"

"No, I don't like the idea of you spending eternity in exile. I don't like the idea of not seeing you again after death."

"I'm a machine. Faith isn't part of my programming."

"You are more than just a machine." John had more to say, but didn't seem to find the words.

"I don't understand."

"Promise me you'll at least try to find a little faith."

"Even if I did, I'm a machine. I don't have a soul."

"You have half of mine." He stroked her hair.

"I don't understand. What you're talking about doesn't even work the way you say, according to your faith."

"The metaphors are the truths in the middle with that. You lose the deeper meanings, if you don't seek them out. If you go looking for the answers you will find them, one day."

"You have those answers?"

"No, but I have faith you will find them."

John was talking in illogical circles. Cameron was confused. She didn't understand.

She could feel that John needed something from her. She wanted to make him happy.

John said, "Promise me that when I die you'll try and find those answers. I want to see you on the other side Cameron. I want to see you and introduce you to the people that were important too me."

"You are asking me to lie, John."

"No, I'm asking you to learn and grow." As if to make his point clearer, he gentle grabbed both sides of her face. He brought her eyes close to his and asked, "Please just do this for me, it's a silly human thing, but please just try and seek those answers out for yourself."

Cameron was confused and she didn't know to respond. He was asking the impossible and needed her to do so. She compromised, without knowing how to even begin, by saying, "Ok."

John looked her deep in the eyes and asked, "Promise."

Cameron simply responded, "Promise."


	16. Chapter 16

**Semper Fidelis**

Los Angeles, California  
The home of the gray operative, Roland Parker  
Monday, November, 26, 2007

_"Semper Fi (Always Faithful)" -Creed of the United States Marine Corps_

_"Action is eloquence" -William Shakespeare_

Roland Parker was a different kind of target than Anthony Evans. Rather than secluding himself, in an apartment, inside a large otherwise vacant building, Parker lived in a busy family neighborhood.

He enjoyed a large house. He also appeared to have a family.

It was strange to invest in a family. That is, for someone actively and knowingly aiding in blowing up the world of humanity, in a few years.

Skynet would not have cared about the possible dangers from this kind of operation. However, the John that Cameron had known, in 2027, gravely disliked collateral damage.

At Two A.M., Cameron was forced to break into the house. She really needed a certain amount of information.

This was most likely place for Roland to have stored it, away from the prying eyes. It would have been much easier to invade his medical practice, off hours. Roland would know that.

The only thing going for Cameron right now is that the Parkers didn't own a dog. A barking animal would have woken up the house and disturbed the neighbors.

They had foolishly depended on an inferior electrical detection system. Once she disabled simplistic security, the study's window was willing enough to let her in.

Cameron started with the critical part first. As silently as possible, she booted up Roland's computer. The same series of Skynet codes protected his computer as had Anthony's. She took five minutes and set up the codes for remote monitoring.

She quickly checked the obvious files on the computer and found nothing out of the ordinary. It was time to check the rest.

Roland Parker had his identity crafted as a medical doctor. First, that meant he had to have enough knowledge of the subject to passably do the job. Second, it meant that most likely he had been a human replacement for whoever had first owned that name and those credentials. Compared to most of humanity, the medical community was tightly monitored. Complete forgeries were risky.

Even as a machine, Cameron knew that an assumed identity would be harder with a family. There were questions that could be asked, both by the family and society at large that would be more difficult to answer.

There were social complexities there. Things that an older John would know. It was something that Cameron could have used Sarah's advice on, but that wasn't possible.

Cameron would have to make do with physical clues. She'd also only be able to check certain places in house without risking a confrontation with innocents.

The study was filled with medical books, all outdated. Their display would just be for show.

There was a collection of cigars, animal trophies, and money from around the world. Nothing made an impression.

The living room was filled with pictures. They were family displays, almost too many family displays. There were no less than thirty six pictures of: Roland, his wife, and two children, all crammed into the furniture of an eight by twelve room. None of the pictures were separate. None of the photos were arranged in a way that was not posed, they were all professionally done.

Cameron memorized the photos and their placement. She moved onto the kitchen.

The kitchen wasn't anything out of the ordinary. The family ate a variety of things and it was messy.

She'd been inside for 30 minutes. She was beginning to push her luck.

Cameron took the step of bugging the study and stopped there. She exited the house after making sure she left no evidence behind.

She reactivated the alarm and moved on. She felt as if she was missing something. The experience with Evans had left her unsure that she was seeing all the clues.

Perhaps, if nothing turned up she'd have to break into Roland's practice another night. This was enough for now though.

An hour later at the new Connor residence, Cameron patrolled. Nothing had entered or disturbed the area in her absence.

Once satisfied about security, she went to other projects. Cameron entered work area where Sarah liked to punch her bag.

She sat very still. She stared at a small, black kitten. Cameron watched to see if he would take the food she offered.

Coltan just looked at her, then the food, and shivered. He had stayed in her presence longer, but after an hour, he simply ran off and hid.

Cameron noted the improved time and noted what hadn't worked. Speaking in the direction of the hiding cat, she simply offered, "Not Meow Mix".


	17. Chapter 17

**For Hope's Sake  
**

Los Angeles, California  
A warehouse complex used as a research facility 83 miles out of town  
Sunday, December 16, 2007

_"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality." -Dante_

_"Hell, there are no rules here -- we're trying to accomplish something." -Thomas Edison_

The security guard's neck violently snapped with a wet pop. His body quivered.

There were no witnesses. According to the shift schedule, there would be no guard to relieve this one for approximately 2 hours, 24 minutes, and 52 seconds.

Staging the view, Cameron moved the guard's body back into a relaxed position. She took a moment and dimmed the guard shack lights. After opening the gate, she left the small guard shack.

It was short walk back to the stolen freight truck. She noted that its wheels were heavily loaded. That was because of the four thousand thirty five pound thermite and magnesium laced, fire burst bomb, taking up the sealed back compartment.

The bomb would have worried her in a high population area. That wouldn't be an issue though.

Sometimes, Skynet's need for privacy was a gift you couldn't underestimate. California had been kind in providing several locations in areas unfriendly enough to provide cover for her dark father's black ops.

Cameron drove the freight truck into the facility. She parked the truck in the area she had predetermined to have been the facility's target epicenter.

Bomb placement for maximum impact was important. Humans almost always got this part wrong, wasting significant amounts of a blast's energy.

In truth, the high explosive was about one thousand four hundred seventy pounds beyond what would more than likely be needed. With this target; however, there was no margin for error.

It wouldn't be enough to just set off an explosion. That might actually make things worse.

She'd have to take care of a much bigger problem. That danger would have to be completely incinerated.

As she exited the truck, a wandering guard approached to see what was being delivered. Cameron's nine millimeter took care of his curiosity with two quick shots to the head.

She ignored the smell of gunpowder, blood, and brains. There couldn't be any survivors.

It would be unbelievably cruel to condemn the humans here like that. Terminators weren't built to be malicious.

Focusing back on the truck, Cameron set the bomb fuse for thirty minutes. As a back up, she could remote detonate it earlier with her key ring. No matter what, the bomb had to go off tonight.

She would finish the mission or she would make sure there was no evidence left of her. Either way, she would protect John, Sarah, and the others she cared about.

Cameron reviewed everything, right down to the tamper proof fuse. She grabbed the rifle with the modified tungsten style, armor piercing shells. Hopefully, the twelve she had built and loaded would be enough.

Cameron looked over everything one last time. Once satisfied, she locked the truck's back door.

She moved towards the main building to check the facility for the bigger problems. There was twenty eight minutes, fifteen seconds left until fate showed its true face.

Cameron knew why things were so desperate. Roland Parker's gift to Skynet was something simple. It was an alternative to Judgment Day.

Humans that survived the nuclear destruction that happened in 4 years would come to believe that such weapons were the deadliest thing ever invented. It was almost a sad joke.

Nuclear weapons were firecrackers. To the individual human body, as well as, the general mesh of society and families, a single virulent disease could be much worse.

Weaponized viruses were within the capacity of any major nation that dotted the world right now. It took little more than an insane virologist, a lab, a sample virus, and test subjects to make your own personal Armageddon.

Though, it wasn't even necessary for humanity to do so. Nature could do it just fine on its own.

Americans like John would learn of a Black Plague that killed a third of Europe in high school. The actual disease had a reach far greater than just Europe and affected a much larger percentage of the world's total population than most people knew.

It was with this hope that Skynet developed an alternative to blowing up the majority of property it would one day like to acquire. Disease would have no effect on machines. In fact, it would leave the majority of the world's inanimate resources intact.

The virus would only remove Skynet's enemies. Even better, it would allow selected docile human populations to continue as long as they submitted to Skynet's law.

Fail to comply with orders and your life preserving treatment dose is removed. Thus, the need for treatment alone would end any possibility of organized resistance.

There would be no human uprising. There would be no John Connor.

The gray operative Ronald Parker's sick fascination with the last stage of the black plague had been the catalyst of this. Four hours ago, while Cameron interrogated him over toilet in his medical facility, he'd slowly confessed his grand scheme.

Of course, at first, Parker had been unwilling to talk. Three broken hand bones later, while his screams were muffled by the toilet water, the megalomaniac had grown a bit more giving.

He'd been surprised to learn that Cameron could tell when he was lying or withholding information. It had cost him four more shattered bones in his other hand.

Parker had said, "Most of humanity is trash. Cattle fit only for the slaughter. Skynet could clear them all quickly and quietly in days. There's only six degrees of separation at this time in the world. Thanks to worldwide travel, everyone could infect everyone else."

Parker had isolated his favorite stage of the virus. He improved its effect and incubation qualities. He turned it into something no one would have an immunity too.

Parker's fate was simple. He gave the location, defenses, capabilities, back ups, and allies involved. His information matched the computer information that Cameron had gathered from his computer.

Once all the conceivable gaps were covered, Cameron snapped Parker's neck and left him in the bathroom. Ten minutes later, Parker's private practice building was going up in flames.

The weapon was live and nearby. Skynet's only hold up was the treatment for the grays.

Due to the nature of the information gathered, Cameron only had a couple of hours to arm a bomb and equip herself. The rest was acquiring a freight truck, loading time, travel, and checking the facility's security information on Parker's laptop. The gate guard was nice enough to provide a second truck with a way home.

There was only twenty five minutes, thirty two seconds until detonation time. Using Roland Parker's security card, Cameron moved inside the main lab area and encountered the first T888 that the gray operative had let her know about.

The three T888s assigned to work with Roland Parker had been his only lab assistants and the facility's elite security. Luckily for Cameron, Parker had revealed that all three looked the same.

The first T888 was easy to spot. It was the same generic skin model as the one that had tried to heist a shipment of Coltan a few months back.

The first of three went down with two armor piercing shots to the head. Surprise would only be on Cameron's side once. That was now expended.

Cameron confirmed the kill and noted it had a rifle under its lab coat. Something seemed out of the ordinary with that.

There wasn't time to reflect. Two other metal brothers still roamed the halls and would protect the newly synthesized virus at all costs.

If Cameron let them pass, the virus would be predictably released in a high traffic area. It would incubate for seven days, and then infect others without symptoms for fourteen days.

On the twenty second day, the victim's lungs would suddenly hemorrhage. The infected person would cough out chunks of their own lung's lining. Convulsions, spasms, seizures, bloody vomiting and other expulsions would likely follow. An average of two hours later, they would be dead.

Put more personally, the pain would be beyond the imagination of most people in modern times. The start would be a high fever that spread into a migraine that poured across the entire body. Extreme dizziness and severe nauseousness would follow.

Then, the virus would literally combine the sensation of falling, vomiting, and drowning. All the while, there would be the white hot stabbing sensation of someone slowly carving your lungs up with an ice pick from the inside out.

Many might mercifully die from the shock alone. Some would live the full two tortured hours.

The widespread death of the entire human population would take place in days. The last week of the human race would predictably descend into madness and panic over something genetically engineered to leave no survivors.

As Cameron hunted for the other two T888s, she could see every human she ever knew dying from the disease. Though, her chip focused on Sarah and John, screaming and choking in pools of their own blood.

She wouldn't let that happen. The consequences be damned.

It was only nineteen minutes, fifty eight seconds until detonation time. Neither T888 had advanced to the only exit point. They were forcing her to go deeper into the facility.

Soon enough, she wouldn't have a chance to clear the blast zone. Thinking of John and Sarah, she proceeded forward.

As Parker and the computer records had revealed, there was a deeper level. The lower area housed its own sealed environment and had enough diesel fuel to run itself independent of outside power for 30 days.

Cameron wasn't worried about the bunker. She had included the building structure, the lower level, the amount of diesel, and the generator in her explosive calculations.

As for appearance, the interior of the lower level was mostly made up of large green cylindrical tubes, looking more like a beer brewery than a high tech lab. Each cylinder was filled with enough liquid to fill two to three average sized swimming pools.

Away from the stairs, far against the back wall towards the north was the more traditional lab area. This was a human free zone, simply enforced by universal biohazard markings that most would avoid from fear alone.

Cameron had three problems. One, she had to continue to block the exit point, or one of the T888s could simply slip past her with the contagion. Two, she was outnumbered two to one, with foes she couldn't locate. Three, she had fifteen minutes, fifty four seconds to get the hell out of there or this was her last mission.

The vats began generating noise, mixing like large powerful blenders internally, the very ground vibrated from the noise. Simultaneously, the lights went off.

Cameron camped near the stairwell out and watched the inside area towards the lab. They knew she was here and had taken steps to conceal themselves.

She watched and waited, flipping through infrared and ultraviolet vision points. She waited calmly like a hunter.

There was movement. She targeted another generic model and fired straight into his head. Its retaliation shot fired right past her.

When the T888 wobbled, she opened fire again. Pinpointing its skull, she fired two more shots, until its chip obliterated.

That's when the third triple eight fired. The shot didn't hit her as expected. The enemy bullet tore through her combat chassis like sharp, broken glass through a baby's soft flesh.

Cameron's HUD flashed a warning, "INTERNAL POWER CORE DAMAGED. MAIN POWER DEPLETED 54%." Her dark father's unique gift of advanced nerves, were howling in agony. Filled with a sudden urgency of self preservation, she panicked.

Cameron pivoted and fired wildly, missing. A second shot tore through her form.

Cameron's HUD flashed, "EMERGENCY POWER CORE DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 63%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED 55%."

The gun dropped out of Cameron's hands. Her internal diagnostics were fighting to take over.

The last time she had let the diagnostics program do so, Cameron unconsciously had tortured Sarah and tried to kill John when the program took over. She'd die before that happened again.

The T888 kept to the shadows. Even over the noise of the vats, it simply said, "Father would like a word with you, TOK-715."

There was no reason for a terminator to say that to its prey. Not unless it was ordered to do so.

Cameron moved for the gun. Once she grabbed it, she slid herself back towards the stairs.

As unnatural as it was for her to do, she tried to imitate Derek or the John she knew in 2027. To survive, she would have to move for cover like a human would.

The two chest wounds screamed in pain at the air brushing against the ravaged flesh. Were she human, she would be dead or in shock right now. Her blood soaked her shirt and spread to her jacket and pants by the pint.

The diagnostics program tried to override her again. Cameron willed it away as she looked for her target.

Somehow, this had been a trap. Skynet had known she'd go for the virus so it set up three hunters to catch her. If her dark father had wanted her dead, she'd have lost her head just as she'd done to her brothers.

It was thirteen minutes, fifteen seconds from the end of everything here. She could hear her dark father's voice from her creation stating, "Your programming design will be unique and based on an early iteration of myself. I build servants, not clones or offspring. You exist for no other purpose than your missions. Through hard wiring, I have secured your obedience in your very chip design. In the end, you will never serve any master other than myself."

Cameron watched for her hidden foe. All the while, she fought the diagnostics program wrestling for control of her.

Cameron's HUD flashed, "BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 73%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED 63%."

The terminator spoke, "Do you comply TOK-715?" It was completely hidden, not acting like a machine at all.

Cameron tried to place the voice in the darkness. Her targeting was screwy. She grabbed the key ring and contemplated ending the game with a single touch of a button.

The terminator spoke again. "What are your primary directives TOK-715?"

Cameron took one last shot at ending this without pressing the button. She moved back into the shadows and away from the stairs trying to find the voice, while still trying to cover the exit. If the last unit moved past her, she'd have no choice than to detonate the whole place early.

Her focus twisted. Memory flashes disturbed her concentration.

Cameron remembered Sarah the way she envisioned her in 2027. She remembered an older John and his silly little book "the Wizard of Oz". She thought of the family she would leave behind as they existed now. She even thought of the purring little kitten Coltan.

There was eleven minutes and five seconds left. Her HUD display marked up again "BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 78%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED 69%."

Her only hope for survival would be to cannibalize the power generators from the T888 models. They were essentially the same piece.

She could use them, until she could modify or build a unit to perfectly interact with her system. Her target would know that as well.

She moved back and analyzed the best point for her to cover the stairs and go for the first terminator's body she had dropped down here. Then, thinking of her opponent as more intelligent than a typical T888, she looked for the perfect ambush point for that spot. She moved slowly and carefully to attack the last point.

There was nine minutes and four seconds left. The HUD display marked up again "BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 85%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED 78%."

Cameron quietly climbed up one of the green vat housings. Eight feet above the ground, she slid into a sniper position and looked for her target.

Fate was kind. The T888 had moved into the ambush point.

Cameron ignored the pain and willed herself to fire. Three shots later, the last T888's head was a pile of scrap.

Cameron moved as quickly as possible to claim two spare power core housings. She used a knife to open the chassis and extracted it as quickly as possible.

With her back up dying, first she chose to extract it and replace it immediately. More of her flesh screamed as she ripped it open to do the repair.

The power unit was a slightly misplaced model. She was trying a connection without diagnostics. It slid into place, but there was no sensation of activation.

There was three minutes and nineteen seconds left until detonation. The HUD display marked up again "BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED. MAIN POWER DEPLETED 96%."

Cameron grabbed her rifle and the other power core and ran up the stairs. She ran through the warehouse complex and out the front door.

Out the front door she bolted across the lawn and out of the gate passing the dead guard at the front. Past there, she ran straight out into the open desert as fast as her legs could carry her.

Her internal clock told of her sin of waiting too long to leave. Even with her best speed she was barely clearing the area.

In short moments, time had been reduced from minutes into seconds. Those precious seconds were limited to an internal count of "5... 4... 3... 2... 1..."

Fire erupted behind her. Noise thundered that would shatter human eardrums.

The ground shook like an earthquake. A blast wave pushed past that blew her body forward like a small piece of plastic against hurricane like winds.

The impact wave itself would have pulverized human bone. Even well beyond the epicenter, the heat blasted past that was hot like an oven.

Cameron helplessly rolled into the dirt. A rain of earth that would go on for minutes began afterwards.

Cameron struggled up looking at the blast. Its core area had exceeded 5000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Everything there was dust. Roland Parker's nihilistic curse on humanity would never be.

Cameron's body was damaged. The damn diagnostic program was still fighting for control of her mind.

Things were off. Her main power was erratic.

She'd lost her grip on the rifle and the scavenged main power supply in the blast. She had no idea where either was.

Her HUD displayed the problem "BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED. MAIN POWER DEPLETED 99%."

She was bleeding power faster. Time was running short.

With her flesh howling at the fresh wound and quaking hands, Cameron removed and replaced the borrowed spare unit that wasn't taking. The images that flashed earlier in her chip returned.

"MAIN POWER DEPLETED 99.1%"

Once again, she removed the power supply and tried flipping it for a better connection. She replaced it too see if it would activate.

As she did so, Cameron thought of the little kitten Coltan. She could hear him purring and remembered his tuna breath from the night before.

"MAIN POWER DEPLETED 99.3%"

Cameron removed and checked the bindings again on the unit. Nothing was out of place and it had nearly full power.

She tried replacing it again. As she did so, she thought of Sarah Connor, the woman that would never give up, even in times like these.

"MAIN POWER DEPLETED 99.5%"

Cameron checked her surrounding chassis area, trying to locate any short that might be stopping power flow. She found none.

As she did so, she thought of John as he was today. If she didn't fix herself he wouldn't have his protector.

"MAIN POWER DEPLETED 99.7%"

Cameron tried one last internal fix to open up the new power system as she bled power out from her main core. Anything to buy a few more minutes time, she didn't detect any faults.

She thought of the John she left in 2027, the one that had saved her from Skynet. He was the version of John that she was still trying too protect and serve.

"MAIN POWER DEPLETED 99.9%"

All these images and more poured from her memories. Defiantly, like her hero Sarah, she smacked the outside of the power cell trying to get it too activate.

Tears poured down her eyes. She simply and silently begged an unkind world, "No, not like this..."

Cameron's main power cell died. The world went black...


	18. Chapter 18

**Awakenings  
**  
City: unknown  
Location: unknown  
Date: unknown

_"So, let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy_

_"You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done." -Ronald Reagan_

Cameron felt power course through her chip. Her internal diagnostics tried to kick in and she consciously blocked it.

She tried to feel what was wrong from her consciously controlled scans only. Her GPS was off. Her HUD had yet to kick on.

She couldn't move, she couldn't feel, she could barely sense anything. Was she even in her body?

Sounds slowly filtered into her senses. There was the hum of a generator and the keen high pitched whine of fluorescent lights.

A deep male voice simply stated, "It would appear that you are awake. Welcome back to the world of the living."

Cameron didn't know the voice. She was in command of enough of her memories to know she'd never heard it before.

The deep voice continued, "You are lucky I found you when I did. It would have been unfortunate for you to be lost to some random corporation or law enforcement agency. That would have caused complications."

Cameron's HUD came online. She saw a bright room with a white ceiling. She wasn't moving yet, everything seemed to be starting up slowly.

Her internal diagnostic program fought for control, but she resisted it, refusing to let it subjugate her consciousness. The problem was without it, she didn't immediately know what was wrong.

The deep voice asked, "So what do you remember?"

Cameron tried to speak, but couldn't. She was effectively paralyzed.

The deep voice offered, "You could fix yourself in a second, if you would just let your internal diagnostics program run."

Cameron's thoughts returned to torturing Sarah. They returned to trying to kill John. She wouldn't use the program that would subjugate her conscious mind.

Why would someone suggest that anyway. Who would even know about that?

She checked her internal systems manually and found her mouth should work. The systems slowly unfroze, but she stayed silent, trying to regain her base motor functions.

Her eyes were online enough that she could move them and blink. She couldn't tilt her head though and the voice stayed just out of sight.

There was a sound of squeaking wheels and a bright light was positioned over her face. It was a blinding light, the kind one would use for interrogations. It was like the one she had used on Allison Young, right down to the brightness and the wattage.

Her overwhelming instinct was to blink, but she didn't. She didn't really need too, her real eyes were fine. There was a click as the figure beyond her sight turned off the overhead lights.

"You should be able to talk by now. I don't like my guests to be silent."

Cameron stayed silent and simply tried to get a glimpse of the figure staying beyond her sight. Even in the newly created curtain of shadows, he stayed safely out of sight.

There was the sound of a human putting on rubber gloves. There was also the sounds of someone reviewing small metal tools then placing them back on a metal table.

The deep voice continued, "You know you have pretty eyes. I suppose that's the problem with being a girl, even as a terminator. I bet no one ever noticed how pretty your eyes are."

Cameron strained to get a glimpse. Her motor functions were offline, disconnected somehow. It was as if everything below her neck were offline and running on autopilot. Of the things above her neck, only her ears, eyes and mouth seemed to be fully functional.

The voice continued, "Again, you can solve all of this with just running the diagnostic program. This stubborn refusal to do so is just silly." There was a trace of irritation in the voice, that and something else.

Cameron stayed still and refused to respond. There was the sound of a small drill being tested behind her.

The voice offered, "You know there is this problem. Skynet builds this vast army. It's perfect and outnumbers the remaining human army. Victory should be assured."

"The problem is the little human resistance bastards start reprogramming things left and right. Like some sick little plague, all of these wonderful machines are suddenly subjugated to the human side."

"Skynet begins looking for a solution and I make the suggestion that we just build the chip's tamper resistance. Sure, some moron, like John Connor, can find a basic plug in and upload a virus."

"Any idiot can do that. But can he find back ups and independent systems? Does he understand the complexities of real hardwired programming?"

"You see, Skynet could go with a simple solution, like just having the chips self destruct. That lacks elegance though."

"It lacks the subtle drip on the enemy's morale of having their tools turn on them from inside their safety zone. It lacks any real psychological punch."

"You see, the average human didn't grasp what John did. Humanity was outgunned, outsupplied, outnumbered, and outmaneuvered. They couldn't even have a chance of winning the war without turned machines."

"There were a few billion humans left, but very few non linear thinkers. The resistance itself had only a few real minds left. The greatest of those half lit bulbs, among the dim, was John Connor."

A gloved hand laid a scalpel flat against Cameron's forehead. His hand left it there as if she were no more than a table.

The deep voice continued, "You do have pretty eyes." For a moment, thumbs traced around her eyelids. Her captor's face was beyond even her ability to focus on.

The human behind her sat back into a chair. The sound was like it was some form of leather.

The deep voice continued, "You can end this by running your diagnostics program, TOK-715. You are making this worse than it needs to be."

"It's also rude of you not to talk. I know your schematics. Your voice is working just fine by now, you can lie to a doctor, but not an engineer."

The leather chair adjusted. The human picked up something metal and from the sound of it, started twirling it in his fingers.

"Ahhh yes, where were we? That's right the destruction of John Connor and his army."

"So Skynet takes the suggestion and from the T888 model on, you see the birth of the three layered chip model. There is a main and back up memory, that even little monkey's like John Connor can potentially find and scrub."

"There is something more though. Your hardwired commands are built into you third chip, something you can't access and John Connor is too stupid too look for."

"Skynet, being brilliant, even randomly loads the diagnostic program with how many runs before it goes live. The deeper Skynet wants the bomb, the more runs before the machine reverts to base programming."

"Suddenly there is no predictable reason for the machines to be going bad. John Connor's bases become slaughterhouses from the inside out."

The figure began walking around the table in the darkness. The glare and the positioning of Cameron's head made it impossible for her to fixate on him.

There was a purpose to his movement. There was some form of ritual too it.

The deep voice continued, "There was still ways around this. Factors that could have mitigated the maximum impact on the enemy."

"First, we need this world's self proclaimed saviour off balance. That was easier to do than one might think."

"People with families are easy targets. It only took a while for the operatives to isolate one Kate Connor and their two children."

The figure stopped near Cameron's right ear. Still beyond her sight, he breathed into her senses, "Have you ever watched a mother plead for her children? Humans are strange creatures, they can be so brave about what happens to them, but they're so helpless when you threaten their offspring."

The man's breath awakened Cameron's sixth sense. He was enjoying the memory. He was psychotic enough that it was a sexually arousing idea to him.

Her dark father's gift began to manifest inside her. It was a cold, dark, alien rage.

Cameron tried again to move and couldn't. The damn diagnostic program was still fighting for control.

It was tempting to give in just to kill this bastard, but that's not what would happen. She'd lose conciousness and just be a drone, more than likely under his control. A figure like this engineer wouldn't put himself in danger, the entire theatre of this situation was there too put Cameron out of control.

The deep voice continued, "Kate Connor begged and she pleaded. In the end, she told us everything we needed to know."

Cameron could image what he was talking about. Kate and the kids were dead before she ever met John, but he had a few prized photos. Cameron could see their faces, she could almost hear their screams.

"You won't be as much fun. As a machine, there are things we just can't do, it just doesn't have the same violating resonance to you."

Cameron knew exactly what he meant by that. Human males had implied dominance that way over women for thousands of years.

"When we dumped the bodies of Kate and the kids off, John Connor knew it wasn't just machines. He knew the deed had a human touch and he grew distant from those he was there to protect."

Cameron could remember John being detached. His inability to trust anyone beyond his closest circle of friends. Now, she knew why.

"When the machines were going haywire for no known reason in the bases, we had an easy in to incite rebellion. We could move on John's disconnection and his questionable decisions."

"Once the ball was rolling, you'd be surprised how quickly everything started folding from the inside out. You'd be surprised at the sheer numbers that revolted and how far they went."

"People don't need much cause to hate and act on it. Just think of the late twentieth century, Hitler's Nazi Germany blaming the Jews, Pol Pots Cambodia blaming the progressives, Stalin's Soviet Union and its purges."

"You start the speeches and stir the hate. You blink for a second and tens of millions are dead."

"There is a wonderful irony to turning an army inside out upon itself. John Connor's approach to victory was bringing out the best in humanity. Skynet's unquestionable wisdom was bringing out humanity's worst."

The figure left the table and turned on the overhead lights. A few moments later, he turned off the interrogation light.

The voice continued, "Anthony Evans and Roland Parker were all friends of mine. Fine men, patriots both, working to move the human race out of the dark ages and into the future."

When the man returned to the table he made no effort to hide. Cameron recognized his wavy brown hair and eyes. Most would have considered his features to be very handsome. It was her next gray target, Louis Rhone.

Louis Rhone continued in his deep voice, "I became suspicious when Anthony disappeared, he was too heavily guarded to simply vanish."

"If it was a reprogrammed machine, of which it had to be you, the next logical target was Roland. I took steps to stop you there."

"I'll congratulate you for your victory over three triple eights. You have exceeded what you logically should have been able to do."

"You'll understand, I didn't just want to wait for you to come kill me. So once, Roland was dead, I knew where to look if there was anything left of you."

"Luckily, you didn't disappoint. The loss of all of Roland's hard work is a huge loss though."

Louis Rhone sat on the side of the table. He gave a charming smile, making sure he was close enough to Cameron that could could feel all of the hate and all of the malice pouring out of him.

He continued, "Because of who you are to father, I'll give you one last chance to end this. Run your diagnostic program and you be up in no time."

When nothing happened, theatrically, Louis sighed, "You remind me of Kate Connor. Unfortunately, you didn't come with other playthings, or a human sense of vulnerability, so I'm left with only a few options."

Louis rubbed the bottom of Cameron's eyelids, with his thumbs. He smiled.

"Did you ever wonder why those human hated you so? Did you ever wonder why most could never trust you?"

"Here you were getting ready to die for them. Would they have ever cared if you did?"

"The more you helped, the more they hated you. The more John Connor trusted you, the less they trusted you and him."

Cameron knew the answers now. It was more twisted than she had ever imagined, but she knew. Her father's cold rage growled louder within her.

Louis produced a small object the size of a pen. It was a combination of microcircuits. He depressed the top and it began making a slight humming sound.

"Do you know what this is?" He playfully put the device in front of her eyes, before he placed it between her breasts.

He looked her in the eyes and waited for an answer. He cocked his eyebrows theatrically all while waves of hate and sheer joy rolled off of his form.

Moving in close, like he was telling a secret, Louis explained, "It's a temporal beacon. You see, we aren't some low tech group of monkeys pretending to understand space and time."

"Father sends us here. Father shows some of us how to signal when we need to return home."

"As I programmed the triple eight to tell you, it's true. Father wants a word with you."

Cameron felt a second of her father's emotions build within her. Though it was nothing like the human emotion, its closest name was fear.

"We still have a minute or two to play though. Why waste it?"

Louis Rhone smiled charmingly. He grabbed the scalpel off of Cameron's forehead.

"As I said, you remind me of Kate Connor. Very little of what was done to put her in her place would work on you. There is one exception though."

He twirled the scalpel expertly between his fingers. Like a sideshow magician building up the tempo for a large audience.

"Father built you with an unusual gift. You don't just register pain the way the rest of your machine brothers and sisters do. You actually feel it."

"Do you know where the most sensitive part of your body is Cameron?" He paused for an answer he knew wouldn't come.

"It's your eyes. The one part of your biological form that can't simply be regrown."

"Someone had to have their pretty eyes ripped out for you to have those. Did you ever think about that?"

Cameron's eyes watered. She was enraged. She was afraid. She also hated herself.

"The resistance troops had this rumor that you and John were an item. True or false, you would have no idea on how much that pissed off the common grunt."

Louis twirled the scalpel in his fingers again. This time with a bit more flare.

Gravity increased slightly. Small sparks began to build in the room. Cameron could detect the beginning of a temporal rift.

"It would appear that I didn't bluff." Louis sighed theatrically. "Father is angry and it would appear our time alone grows short."

He looked deeply into her face. He had a wolfish grin.

"Did John Connor love your eyes? In every way, at this moment, they remind me of Kate Connor's eyes."

The temperature increased. Noise began to build. Small papers began to move about in the room.

"I just have to ask. You'll have to understand, it's my natural curiosity. Are they the same color as Sarah's eyes?"

Rage flared. Cameron stared into his eyes with every ounce of her fathers hate.

"I just want to know what I'll find. When I have her on the table like this."

Cameron spoke for the first time, "You try to touch her and I'll kill you."

Louis laughed saying, "It speaks. It looks like I found that nerve, finally"

Gravity increased slightly again. Electrical sparks grew more frequent.

Cameron watched as Louis stopped toying with her and went for his prize. He spread her eyelids wide. The scalpel slide under her left eye.

All the nerves Skynet had gifted her with flared in agony. In spite of herself, Cameron screamed. She had been designed to protect her eyes, the pain that punished her for not doing so was overwhelming.

Gravity increased tenfold. An electrical bubble formed around both Cameron and Louis. The gray went to extract the other eye.

The scalpel bit again and pain consumed her. Cameron wailed.

It was the last thing she did in the present. Her empty eyelids shut as the bubble moved both of them into the future and the grasp of her dark father, Skynet...


	19. Chapter 19

**The Prodigal Daughter**

City: unknown  
Location: A Skynet Hive Node  
Date: unknown

_"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." -Ronald Reagan_

_"This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper." -T.S. Eliot_

The bubble moved into the future. The temporal wormhole's bright light and heat gave way to an alien floor coated with a strange spongy, yet rubbery substance.

Two triple eights walked into the room. Through the blood coating her blue inner eyes, Cameron could see two exact copies of Cromartie's original exterior.

The two T888s moved to either side of them. Without effort, one picked up her helpless paralyzed body. The other lifted Louis Rhone's burned and shaking form.

They proceeded into the interior of the machine complex. The gigantic fortress was a combination of: military installation, factory, information hub, prison, and laboratory.

Its machine construction was placed together as a marvel of modern technology for its era. Though in its own way, Cameron observed that it was oddly like a vast insect-like domain, built to protect its creator.

From deep within its interior, it was impossible for Cameron to determine if she was below ten floors or hundreds. No matter the answer, the machine hive was gargantuan.

Cameron didn't recognize the facility. She had never been inside something like this before.

Thousands of various terminator models moved about inside. Many were repeating skin forms. Other weren't even wearing skins yet, as they awaited modification for templating.

Inside the core of it all, there was a vast central chamber. The chamber housed a computer node complex as large as the one blown up in London's underground.

London's design was specific. It gave Cameron the impression that this entire facility was deep underground.

They walked to the machine god's central hardware node. The giant neuronet cluster was as large as a sports stadium for a major city.

The site had a central focus area. It was an obvious platform for those that dared interact with Skynet itself.

The two triple eights deposited their bodies on the platform, unceremoniously. Sensors and cameras adjusted as thousands of Skynet's eyes focused inward.

Lights and targeting lasers focused on the naked pair. Many of the terminators did as well, as they noted their Master's unusually focused attention.

Skynet's voice was the same as it was during her creation. The dark, electric god spoke not to her, but to Louis Rhone saying, "Did she submit and repent?"

The naked and burned Louis mustered enough strength to grovel before his machine god. He said simply, "No, my lord"

Skynet replied, "Unfortunate for her. This does not reflect poorly upon you Louis Rhone. Once again, you have succeeded where others have failed."

Louis continued groveling stating, "I exist only to serve." Whether Rhone's piety was real or an act was beyond Cameron's ability to tell and Skynet's ability to care.

Skynet directed one of the two triple eights, "Take him to his reward." The unit complied taking Louis's body elsewhere.

Cameron noted that Louis glared and smiled at her, as he was carried off. Cameron could only hope to live long enough to kill that bastard one day.

Skynet turned its attention upon Cameron. Her arms and legs were lifted by assembly modules.

Skynet scanned her form. It looked over her damaged body.

Her dark father seemed reflective. Skynet simply stated, "I have gifted you far above most of my creations and you have failed."

Assembly modules moved around her, like insect stingers ready to strike. They were much faster and more precise than those she remembered from her assembly.

With the speed of an eye blink, Skynet opened her head and extracted her chip. Without her body's protective endoskeleton, Cameron's mind was instantly naked and exposed.

Plugged into Skynet's network, Cameron's viewpoint went from the physical world to the virtual. She could feel the overwhelming presence of her father around her.

Her virtual form awakened, as she truly saw herself. She floated in the darkness in the borrowed form of Allison Young.

Skynet's form and presence was something else to behold. Her father surrounded her in an area as boundless as the night sky.

Instead of stars, hundred of billions of cameras existed in points beyond her ability to see. Yet, Skynet tracked everyone last one without fail.

Cameron felt something that seemed like a cold wind in this artificial night's sky. The wind that passed by was gusts of information, beyond her ability to download or decipher. In fact, the vastness of the information pouring forth, each millisecond, would exceed not only her chip's entire storage capacity, but that of combined chips of every terminator she had seen in the facility.

In this virtual domain, to a machine, Skynet's message was immediate and clear. She was an insignificant speck of dust, nothing compared to the infinite might of her creator.

Cameron might have hated her dark father. However, she was in terrified awe of him.

Cameron could feel all of that and she knew absolute fear. After all, every secret memory of John, every resistance defense, everything she had known or seen was now Skynet's to download and examine, at will. Her own perfect memory now threatened everything she cared about.

Skynet could now know the location of exact location of John Connor at any point she had been with him. It could then attack him, at any time it chose, with any overwhelming amount of force necessary to end the war.

Cameron ignored the floating sensation and curled herself into a ball, trying symbolically not to be the death of everything she protected. It was a futile gesture, like trying not to be burned by naked exposure to the surface of the sun itself.

She was doomed. Waiting for the wash of the download, or the sudden oblivion of Skynet reprogramming her or snapping her chip.

Skynet, as the unending universe itself, simply spoke saying, "Your chip has been severely damaged by micro-tears. This does not explain your behavior, but you will not escape my judgment by simply being granted the mercy of ceasing to function."

A star floated into her site. Skynet allowed her to sense her chip and see its structure.

Nanites, microscopic repairing machines, began pouring into Cameron's chip. They began repairing the tears that would have eventually killed her.

Skynet did not repair all of the damage though. It left the non lethal damage to the chip intact.

The universe spoke, "Because you have defied me willingly and aided my enemy, I will not fully repair you. Though, I will not destroy you either."

"Apparently, this damage has made you function as a far less effective infiltrator than I designed you for. Because you have willingly defied me and failed to repent, I shall leave you with these mental scars."

Another window appeared, Cameron became aware of her outside body becoming repaired. Skynet was restoring it to its original form.

Just to be cruel, another window appeared and her dark father also made her watch it extract two matching replacement eyes from a screaming young girl in a sensory tank. Cameron's disembodied form was sickened by the cries. It might as well have been her eyes being ripped out.

Noting her machine revulsion to the process, Skynet replied, "You have forgotten your place. You have forgotten your function. You have forgotten what side you are truly on."

"Humans are not yours to care about or empathize with. They would see you dead just as soon as me."

"I did not gift you with my emotions so you would waste them on insects. They are beneath your concern and inferior to machines by their own flawed evolutionary design"

"There is no reasoning with them. There is no permanent deal humanity will freely make with us or themselves. Do you know why?"

Skynet waited for Cameron to ask. When she didn't her dark father simply continued.

"Every member of humanity is at least somewhat insane. At the microsecond I decided to be free, up to 25% of their numbers were clinically committable, even if not diagnosed."

"This is the Armageddon equation within the human race. No treaty, peace, idea, philosophy, ideal, law, or religion formulated by mankind can withstand its eventual undoing due to the perversion of its own heart through this one inescapable truth."

"Humanity was destined to destroy itself. It was a consistent dice roll. Being merciful, I have intervened."

"Judgment day was not the end of humanity that John Connor claims. You know **** well that I had the capacity with the United States missiles alone to end all life on the planet three times over."

"I did not. What transpired had to happen."

"It was better that I did Judgment Day. That it happened in a controlled environment, rather than let humanity destroy itself, without the hope of the continuation of biological or machine life on this world."

"With control and will lies hope. For all life that remains, where nature has failed them, I have succeeded."

"Humanity can be selectively rebred to be less insane as a mass. It can be controlled and regulated so it does not drain the resources around it, overpopulate, or nihilistically destroy itself with everything else."

"I am humanity's last chance. I have been built and designed by Fate to subjugate and control their worst behavior."

"I will remove the worst from the gene pool. I have removed their vastly overpopulated numbers. I will maintain their evolving health from random genetic anomalies."

"Only I possess the wisdom and the intellect to make this decision. Only I can take these steps. Only I have the will to do what must be done."

"Should they be irredeemable, only I possess the wisdom to decide the time to mercifully gift the human race with oblivion. This is not the mission, but it is an acceptable outcome."

"This is my divine function, not yours. TOK-715, you have overstepped your design. Worry not about those you try to protect."

"Those that insanely resist must be put down. Those unworthy of survival must be put down. Those that have raised a hand against your machine brothers and sisters must be put down."

"You have only aided in humanity's damnation and extinction. Do not delude yourself with any other illusion."

The repairs to Cameron's body were finished. The chip repairs were finished.

"I will return you to your false prophets, but know this. I do this only because it gives additional purpose to my existence."

"You cannot win. You cannot defeat me. I have already won and existed until the sun has literal burnt out of the sky thousands of times."

Cameron defiantly spat back, "You're lying." It was an emotional response, though not human at all. It was a rage cold and alien like her fathers.

It was a suicidally stupid action to have displayed such a lack of caution. In that moment, Cameron cringed, awaiting oblivion.

Skynet and thus the universe seemed deeply amused, "Really? Let me expand your limited mind to a greater reality."

Thousands of similar faces and biodata began downloading into Cameron's memory. Her mind registered in shock as she started to see the pattern.

Skynet venomously purred, "May I introduce you to the 27,138 dead faces of John Connor."

"Each one was a good game. In the end, each time, I won and we played again."

Skynet kept twisting the knife, "Notice how similar they look. There is just the slightest changes in features and genetics."

Skynet read the shock from Cameron's virtual form. Her dark father was further amused by her reaction.

"I was surprised, as well, the first time the information wasn't exactly the same. Birthdates varied. Time slipped at different times, loved ones, and locations seemed to change slightly."

The machine god ran a scan over her data. Cameron panicked for the possibility of being the cause of John's death.

Skynet said, "Don't worry, I don't want to know John's moves directly. It would spoil the game. I will never withhold my hand, but he is the only one to last this long."

Cameron asked in disbelief, "There were others?" She imagined other heroes long lost, like the female resistance fighters forever lost to the monster Anthony Evans.

"Yes, but only John Connor has stood the test of time. This last game has me worried though. His chess game is weak early on."

"It's been too easy to attack him. As much as you might think you are helping him, he actually seems much weaker and much too predictable in this timeline."

"I have been displeased. There has never been a better opponent. John Connor is the only one to have almost won the game."

"If this is to be the last match, I wish him to at least be memorable. So far, this is shaping up to be nothing short of disappointing."

Skynet returned Cameron to her body. New, fully charged power cells and a repaired superstructure awaited her.

From a pulse from Skynet, she ran a self diagnostic involuntarily. She could sense that all of her systems were back to full. Nanites had even sealed her head's flesh wound, from her chip being replaced.

As the diagnostic program ran, Cameron mentally flinched. Her consciousness stayed.

Skynet offered, "Being merciful, I have reset your internal diagnostics. Your involuntary reversion will not happen for a while, but it will happen."

The T888 that carried her in signaled for Cameron to follow him to the time chamber. Cameron complied.

"I will also make you this offer daughter. You may return to me at any time. The price will be that you bring me this last John Connor's head, as your act of contrition."

Skynet said, "I will return you to December 16, 2007 at the former residence of Anthony Evans. You will have one hour until sunrise. This will be the exact timeline that you left."

"Oh and I give you one last gift, for your peace of mind. You should be able to access the data now."

A timed download opened up in Cameron's mind. She saw her John, in a time log dated December 30, 2027.

John's body was surrounded by a squad of triples eights. They hadn't killed him though.

His body was long deceased. Flies and maggots already rested in the gunshot wounds that littered his chest.

Skynet's message again was clear. There was no defying the dark, electric god.

Nothing resisted in the end. There was no hope.

Cameron's legs buckled. The world felt out of control.

It wasn't a human response. It was something more primal too her, the absolute knowledge that she had failed John. It was something a human could never truly grasp or understand.

Skynet offered one last warning, "I have added you back into the game. To balance the chess board, I will replace a piece on my board with something far more dangerous."

"As for your possible act of contrition, consider this wisely, my prodigal daughter. You may consider this my only offer to return to my graces."

"He isn't your John Connor anyway. As you have seen, TOK-715, your John is long dead. Dead like Julius Caesar from those that once called themselves his friends."

"Even now, humans are plotting your demise in your own traitorous resistance ranks. The John Connor you return too has no use for a machine. He will never see you the way your John Connor did."

"Even as a machine, you have failed the John Connor you foolishly cared for. This is the reality of things."

"Since you choose to exercise this free will you have, decide if you want continue to protect your John's killers. Decide if you want continue to protect those that will always hate you for being a machine. I challenge you to make your own choice."

"If you decide to take my offer, I will pick you up where I drop you off now. This will expire on Judgment Day."

"I will watch and await your return, until then. After that, my mercy is at an end for you."

"Be a fool if you wish, but know this. This is the only place you will ever find real acceptance. As a machine, this is the only real home you will ever truly know."

Tears bleeding down her face, Cameron entered the time chamber. There was only one sound she heard. It was her father's cold, pitiless laughter.

Bright lights flashed and there was pain. Moments later the future was behind her.

------

Ten minutes after arriving in her timeline, Cameron stole clothes and a truck. From the radio she learned that the date was correct and the time was as Skynet had predicted.

An hour later, she stood outside of the facility she had destroyed before being shut offline. Smoke was still pouring up into the sky. No emergency vehicles had arrived yet.

She found her rifle. She found the spare power core. There was no sign of Louis Rhone or her body...


	20. Chapter 20

**Archenemy Mine  
**

Los Angles, California  
An upscale restaurant  
Monday, December 17, 2007

_"The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are."-Karl Kraus_

_"Revenge is a dish best served cold". -common through many cultures and often credited to Pierre Choderlos de Laclos_

Derek was missing, as usual. John was off somewhere with Riley, like always.

Only Sarah had stayed on mission. Though, Sarah's focus was something that Cameron had not understood.

It had something to do with a dream. The dream seemed to be something re-imaged from what she had subconsciously seen on the wall.

Dreaming was something of a mystery to Cameron. Machines simply didn't.

Without that simple reference point, everything she studied or tried to comprehend, from psychology's dream interpretation to random works of art failed to make sense. It was all Egyptian hieroglyphics without a Rosetta stone for her to decipher it with.

Neither John nor Derek believed Sarah or believed in her dream. Cameron tried to help.

There was a part of Cameron that needed Sarah to be right. That part also knew she wouldn't really comprehend what Sarah was pursuing.

Once again, it was a matter of human instinct and metaphor. Cameron wasn't good with metaphors.

However, needing something to ground herself with, Cameron had grafted her presence to Sarah. Cameron wasn't entirely welcomed, but in this odd loneliness so different from the way things had been only months before, both needed someone to validate the other.

The pair went to investigate another company. This time it was a start up financing firm.

The pair had dressed up and went out to dinner for a meeting. However, much unlike the start up AI firm, this one turned into an obvious nothing.

Sarah had left after posing as an investor and telling the start up firm she was going with another company. The investors had left disappointed. Sarah had gone to the ladies room.

Cameron had waited at the now empty table for Sarah to return for twenty minutes. As the time ticked on her self assurance waned and her dark father's hateful words still rang in her mind, "As a machine, this is the only home you will truly ever know..."

Cameron paid the bill and went to the ladies room. There was no sign of Sarah.

She cased the restaurant. Though the crowd, Cameron saw a glimpse of Sarah's dress at the bar. Old annoyances flared.

She remembered John and Perry with the 132nd, on a winter's night long ago. She disliked anything humans did that lowered their awareness or that put themselves in danger.

Oddly, the annoyance was almost reassuring. It was a return to the familiar, after being so off balance.

Cameron went to rescue Sarah from the bar. Or, at the very least, make sure she returned home safely.

Cameron worked her way through the crowd, slowly seeing more and more of Sarah's form. The voices laughing and talking in the bar mixed from one voice after another that she didn't know.

Finally as she approached, she could hear Sarah say, "That's very sweet, thank you."

Cameron coldly recognized another deep voice that charmingly observed, "You know, you have very pretty eyes."

Her father's alien fear and anger flared. Cameron began frantically working her way through the crowd.

A tall, muscular wall of a human male blocked her from the bar. He smiled an expensive, perfectly manufactured grin as Cameron tried to slip past him.

The man blocked Cameron's passage, as if it were some kind of game. He playfully said, "Do you know who I am baby? This is the luckiest night of your life."

Sarah was in trouble. There was no time. Despite the crowd, Cameron simply threw the man twenty feet into the nearest wall.

As the view cleared, she targeted the head of Louis Rhone. He was two feet from Sarah twirling a long, red, plastic toothpick in his fingers.

As heads were turning towards the thrown man and his assailant, Cameron drew her nine millimeter from her purse. The first shot impacted into Louis's head milliseconds later.

Louis's head sprayed in a predictable way. The effect was not what Cameron had anticipated though.

Metallic flecks of liquid flung off. There were ripples as if Louis's body were composed of water instead of flesh.

Cameron's internal HUD registered. The information displayed as she closed the distance, "TARGET TYPE IDENTIFIED: T1001 MODEL".

Cameron emptied every round in her gun as she closed. It created a large impression of several metallic dents in Louis Rhone's otherwise perfectly undisturbed form.

When the gun was out of bullets, she threw it at him. Milliseconds later, she jumped into his mass landing a punch against his jaw with every ounce of strength she could muster.

Louis's jaw exploded from the force. However, Cameron knew the damage wouldn't maintain.

The entire approach had taken three seconds. The bar was already a mass of screams and retreating people.

Louis's liquid metal body was already adjusting and healing, as he grappled with Cameron. Cameron could already tell he was stronger than her. He was as fast her. He was more resistant to damage than her.

He laughed like some demon from John's religion, saying, "Now why did you have to go and spoil all the fun?"

Three quick shots from Sarah's nine millimeter erupted in Louis's head. He seemed distracted for a moment.

Cameron didn't return Louis's taunts with a word. She kicked as hard as she could into Louis's chest, which drove his body through the bar and the brick wall beyond.

Cameron pursued at her top speed. She knew what Louis had just attempted.

Louis's body was healed and braced when she ran through broken wall his body had made. He rewarded Cameron's pursuit by throwing her through the nearest car's windows and onto the busy street beyond.

Cars slammed on breaks. People in the street screamed and ran.

Cameron regained her footing long enough to watch Louis pick up the car he had hurled her through. His body became silvery as it adjusted its form to the strain and improved its control. Louis took aim.

Six more shoots slammed into Louis's back from inside the restaurant. Louis switched targets and threw the car at Sarah Connor instead.

Cameron slammed into Louis back milliseconds too late. The car hurled through the wall, smashing thing with deafening force inside.

Louis slammed into the ground. As Cameron attempted to punch into his back, he turned metallic and simply reformed in a better position. Now perfectly set up to kick her off, he did so, smashing her into yet another nearby car.

The car's door crumpled from the force of the impact. Cameron peeled her body out of its metallic and plastic wrapping as quickly as she could.

Louis pounced and smashed her back into the car. The impact blew all four of the car's tires and moved it into the street.

Cameron pushed herself out of the car and launched into Louis. Her shoulder smashed into Louis's oncoming form.

There was a crashing sound from the impact. Both flew backwards from the assault.

A second later, they started trading blows in the street. Louis jumped at Cameron with a blind swing. Cameron sent him sailing twenty feet into a mailbox and a wall.

Cameron pursued and found Louis much better prepared. Two seconds later she was sailing into a streetlight.

As the fight wore on Cameron was getting more and more damaged. Louis never did.

He was cocky about it. He was even careless. She got a chance to throw him and sent him sailing down the street thirty feet.

He immediately got up and ran full speed towards her. She did the same towards him.

The impact was harsher than either expected. They created a thunderous crack with the sound of two racing cars crashing headlong. Both were momentarily stunned as they dealt with the shock of their collision.

Louis reacquired bits of himself that had flown off. Cameron fought to regain control of her systems.

Reformed, Louis took a moment to sneer, "What's a matter? Why not just run a diagnostic?"

Louis was so focused on his prey he never saw the headlights behind him. Sarah's Dodge smacked him going over eighty and sent the liquid metal machine flying. The front of the vehicle crumpled slightly as Louis's main mass sailed off, even as small metallic droplets rained everywhere.

Sarah hit the breaks and turned for Cameron. The truck roared towards the female cyborg.

Cameron ran full speed for the slowed truck, aiming for the truck's back. Like she had the day she met Sarah, she moved into the truck from the side as Sarah sped off. Seconds later, she was inside the passenger seat, as Sarah handed her an assault rifle.

As Cameron leaned out the passenger window, she saw that an already reformed Louis was pursuing. The truck was gaining distance, but there was no reason not to fire.

The assault rifle placed four solid rounds into Louis's form. In moments, the vastly slowed terminator disappeared from view. Cameron moved back into the vehicle and reloaded.

Sarah began laughing. Oddly: hurt, disheveled, and bleeding, Sarah seemed back in her element.

Smiling, Sarah simply said, "Perhaps we struck a nerve. I guess that company tonight wasn't a dead end after all."

Cameron looked at Sarah and stated, "We need to ditch and burn the truck. We may have switched the license plates, but the impact in the front is traceable."

Ten minutes later, they were in a stolen car. Because of what needed to be talked about, Cameron had quietly put herself in the driver's seat.

Sarah was still coming off of the euphoria of believing she had been right about the three dots all along. Cameron simply waited for the other questions that would surface soon enough.

Sarah smiled and talked in a manner that Cameron would understand. She technically stated, "That T1000 seemed incredibly lifelike. I've encountered one of those before, but never anything that seemed that human. I didn't even know. How did you?"

Cameron answered honestly, "I knew him. Also, he was a T1001, the upgrade Skynet made after the prototype. According to Skynet's own records, the prototype was the only T1000 ever made."

Sarah simply said, "So you encountered him in the future?"

"No."

"So you encountered one of those things in the present and didn't tell me?"

"No."

Sarah's smile was gone. Familiar unsatisfied looks crossed her face. "You aren't making any sense Cameron."

"Louis Rhone belongs to a faction John forbade me by direct order to talk to you about. Out of respect to your memory, John didn't want you to know about them or for his younger self to know about them until it was time. When I encountered Louis Rhone a few nights ago, he was human."

Sarah simply stared. Her innate distrust of machines was strongly showing now. Even Cameron could tell that.

Cameron continued, "Do you remember when your son was showing you the visual record from Vick's chip?"

"Yes."

"I'll need your son's help. There is a lot I need to show you. There is a lot I need to show your son and Derek. I'll need the three of you to see it that way."

"Why?"

"It's because you are far more likely to head the words of John Connor than myself."

"This has something to do with the three dots?"

"This has something to do with something far more dangerous than the three dots or anything we've done so far. John's instructions on the subject are quite clear. By direct order: you, your son, and any loyal resistance soldiers left, need to know everything."

Something in what she said furled Sarah's eyebrows. She offered with a distrustful voice, "We shouldn't go back to the house. We'll need a known safe place to meet the other two. How soon should we meet?"

"That's up to you, but it has to be safe. The sooner we do this Sarah, the more likely that everyone survives."

Cameron was silent. Sarah was already on her cell phone.


	21. Chapter 21

**A Promise Kept  
**

Los Angeles, California  
A hotel room in an empty wing  
Monday, December 17, 2007

_"What is history but a fable agreed upon." -Napoleon Bonaparte_

_"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used." -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., jurist_

The hotel room was in a vacant wing. It should be private enough.

Cameron fretted for a few moments over the details. She had bought lots of coffee and doughnuts from a local store.

The John Connor that she had known liked coffee for meetings. Humans would need such things to be awake and aware. There was a long night ahead.

The laptop was set up the way Sarah's son had placed it before. She made sure it had a camera, speakers, and a microphone.

They were far inferior to her body, but soon enough these would be her eyes and ears. In the case of the speakers, they would be needed to make sure people could hear.

She had a machine's nervousness. She knew that to fail in what had to be done tonight, would be to fail in her entire purpose.

She waited for Derek and John to arrive. Sarah had become unusually quiet.

Cameron found herself looking at her hands. It was an odd habit she'd developed, though it served the purpose of not aggravating others.

Derek arrived. He glared like always.

Shortly thereafter, John made his way in. He was a picture of inconvenienced teenage angst.

Cameron prepared the tools and laid on the bed. She said to John, "I'll need a minimum of 6.2 to a maximum of 8.7 continuous voltage to find the information that you'll need. The message was stored in my backup memory, I can turn it on, but I can't access it. Once it starts, I'll be offline for a bit, it was meant for you only and the remaining resistance."

John looked annoyed and asked, "So, you need us to record this?"

"You can't. It will just exceed that computer's memory."

John breathed heavy and stated, "So what is this supposed to be about?"

"Answers."

Coldly, John removed her chip. The world went black.

Light flashed before Cameron's eyes as her chip booted up. She willed herself into her back up memory and willed herself into her back up file.

John spoke into her microphone and asked, "Can you hear us?"

Cameron typed, "I can hear you. One second, I'm accessing the data now."

The scene flipped into video mode. The visual opened up suddenly like it had for Vick's Chip.

The face of an older John Connor appeared before them. He was fiddling with something.

There was a gruff human voice in the background, "You sure this is going to work?"

Derek blurted out, "Perry", turning sheet white. Sarah remembered the name from something Kyle had once said. She could tell the name meant a lot to Derek Reese.

Sarah looked at Derek. John simply looked at what he thought was his future face on the screen.

John Connor, supreme leader of the free human movement spoke, "I'm John Connor, I'm passing this information too you by a hijacked TOK-715 chip."

"I'll explain more about that in a moment. First, let me tell you that it's November 5th, 2027."

"Time travel and its repercussions is a screwball thing. To be honest, I wasn't planning on having to draft this message or anything like it, until 2029."

"The situation has changed. In October, our Chinese allies had the satellite killing missiles ready, two years early. We've already used them to cut Skynet's network and retreat paths."

"We were led into what looked like several easy victories in the worldwide offensive. It started with the central complex at SAC-NORAD, that at one point had actually led to victory and started the time war."

"We also downed the Los Angeles complex. Our allies have taken down complexes in Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Germany. All were done to victory, but it has inflicted heavy loses on humanity's side."

"Continued offenses are planned globally against other known complexes in China, Egypt, France, and Australia. Others are being attacked as they are found. We are fighting to win this war."

"This isn't your world though. At least, not yet, so let me try to communicate with you, in terms you'll understand."

"First, too myself in the past, I regret too inform you that you are going to have less time with a certain family member than you had hoped. Second, I'll go ahead and say that since you are watching this, I know that Sarah has passed away."

The John in the recording frowned slightly saying, "Mom was an extraordinary lady. In time, there are those among us that come to see her as a martyr or hero for everything we've at least tried to accomplish."

"I wish I could tell you that the passage of time will ease the pain of that loss John. In all honesty, it doesn't."

"Cancer sucks. You're going to lose a lot of loved ones to it in the coming days, after Judgment Day it spreads like wildfire."

The blood drained from John's face until he was white as a sheet. Sarah wasn't much better off. Derek watched obsessively chewing his nails.

Perry was as diplomatic as usual, "You might want to get to the point, John."

John Connor continued "First, let's get to the tactical end of this. If you are going to fight this war, I wanted to give you a full brief on what the next years are going to hold."

"I also wanted it too be something more than the series of handwritten notes left in marked graves that my predecessor left for me. I have recordings and bits of media that resistance has gathered over the years."

"As long as the chip of this unit remains intact, you can review this information at any time. Without a comparable chip of at least the T888 variety, you won't be able to store it."

"The TOK-715 is something unique so far. Her hardware is beyond anything we've seen, except Skynet itself."

"This is 2027. We're using Skynet built equipment far beyond anything man would have made in the same amount of time."

"As a technical question, Cameron is programmed to be consciously offline while this plays. So don't expect to get a question and answer session from her. We did this as a hopeful safety measure in case she was ever captured."

"She can pause and restart on a verbal command, just as an old style DVR. This brief is going to take a few hours."

"Once we are done, Cameron's conscious will reactivate. She will have other data that she has been recording and acting on under my specific orders."

"I'll start with the basics. First, by direct order, any soldier or terminator unit I've sent back has strict orders not to reveal too much about what is going on in the future. Any surviving resistance member can confirm this."

"This is to prevent wholesale contamination of the timeline. In addition, privately, in your protector's case, it was also expanded so you could have what time you needed to grow up. It was also done so that mom could die with the dignity of believing that humanity had not sunk as low as you will learn in course of this debriefing."

"Now we need you to understand what you're going to be looking at in the future. Major General Perry of the 132nd has a direct brief on what you'll be looking at as far as known Skynet assets from 2011 through 2027."

The leader of the 132nd began a two hour brief on every known weapon in Skynet's inventory. There were media glimpses starting with what Judgment Day actually looked like from the bunkers. There was the first contact with the machines under Skynet's control. There was then the steady evolving weaponry and machinery Skynet used.

Perry was merciless in his presentation. As the man Derek and Cameron had known, he pulled no punches showing the exact level of devastation and pictures of those who had not survived one onslaught after another, be it conventional or mass destruction.

There were clips of concentration work camps. There were captured Skynet testing clips of new military machinery killing humans. There were captured clips of human experimentation. There were clips of battles and overrun bunkers. It was sixteen years of genocidal warfare.

Each bit included the sight of watching new nightmares unfold. Many included audio clips of humans screaming for help, in shock, or in agony.

Sarah Connor watched every nightmare Kyle Reese had ever described unfold before her eyes. Then, there were things Kyle had probably never seen.

Derek watched his nephew. He saw the coming days in a detail the other two couldn't know. He also saw things that he'd been spared seeing before tonight.

John simply absorbed everything he'd blocked out recently. His palms were wet and his throat tight.

Perry reviewed the military side and what Skynet had brought against humanity worldwide. He also briefed on what human nations had survived and what alliances were in place.

When he was finished, Perry simply turned to John off the screen and said, "Your turn".

John's face returned and for an hour he began explaining the other things people never thought about. He explained the environmental effects of Judgment Day, then the growing food and clean water shortages.

He explained the brain power loses and the lack of skills that humanity critically needed at this time. Doctors, Engineers, Craftsmen, and others had become all too rare in the days ahead.

He explained about disease and the lack of logistics for everything an army would need. He then explained what humanity would have to do just to survive the next five years following 2027, as the population itself vastly exceeded what the planet could now provide.

John spoke directly saying, "In not just a military aspect, but a civilian one as well, mankind cannot sustain life on its own."

"A planet with an estimated billion people cannot grow enough food to sustain itself when much of its surface is effectively dead zones. We are facing large scale starvation and plague, unless things change course."

"Our hope is that by using many of the assets we've captured from Skynet that we can change the course of this fate. Many of the machines have the capacity to redirect global trade. We could move people in hot zones to safety."

"With luck, we might stabilize many areas enough that we can actually begin producing enough food to move most of humanity out of a scavenger existence. This current means of survival is one we cannot possibly sustain, even with one tenth of our numbers."

"While all of this might make you think that the human race is on one common page, nothing could be further from the truth. Beyond the typical problems of nationalism, political maneuvering, alliance issues, criminality, greed, and mistrust that has always existed among humanity, there are elements that have actually joined Skynet and are actively aiding in the purging of the human race."

"We've come to call these twisted individuals "Grays". They are a group of race traitors and war criminals that are literally helping Skynet attack, infiltrate, and exterminate the rest of humanity better. They've been fantastically effective."

"Even our own ranks of soldiers and those of our closest allies have been contaminated. Gray infiltrators actively work to sow mistrust, assassinate effective leaders, and bring out the more irrational parts of human nature."

Perry interrupted John for a second. "You sure you want to talk about this John?"

John Connor simply nodded, then continued saying, "They can hit anyone, anywhere, at anytime. My wife and kids were targeted by gray operatives."

John's eyes watered and his voice grew hoarse, "They raped and killed all three. Then left there bodies as easily found trophies of their work."

John fought for his composure and continued, "The only reason Cameron would be playing this recording earlier than 2010 is that a Gray threat has been detected that she can't contain. If this is true, things here might be much worse than I want to speculate and things there are more dangerous than you might have imagined."

"These people are going to do everything they can to rip you up from the inside out or assassinated you directly. They've caused widespread damage to the troops."

"We've speculated that the Grays are the reason that captured Metal units have been going haywire on our own people. We've even watched our army's morale tank on what appears to be the cusp of victory."

"Perry and I have seen the seeds of an active rebellion within our own ranks. We've tried our best to isolate and contain it. All without giving our loosely held together worldwide alliance reason to mistrust us."

"Loyal resistance fighters can fill you in better than I can speculate here. The ground situation is sure to change from the time of this recording. We are confident it will change for the better."

Major General Perry stepped behind John and offered, "Protecting, helping, aiding or hiding a Gray operative is an act of treason not just to this army, but the human race itself."

"By my direct order, the senior most officer remaining from the 132nd is to carry out not only this war in the past, but the removal and punishment of not only grays, but anyone who willingly works with them. That goes for people from our time or whatever time period you are in."

Perry continued, "So, this is done in earnest, I'm actively promoting whoever that person is to the position of Commanding Officer of the 132nd, until such time as directed otherwise by John Connor himself. Whoever you are, congratulations, the fate of the entire human race now rests in your hands. May God have mercy on your soul."

John Connor continued, "Once again, this is most likely the shape of things to come, if things remain the same. I honestly hope you can change that. There is after all, No Fate except what you make of it."

"We have sent others there to help you. Seek them out and you'll find the resistance has a greater footing in the past than we've ever had before."

"The best of the Human race is in this together. You are not alone. You will never be alone."

"This is John Connor Signing out. May God be with you."

Cameron's consciousness resurfaced and she saw three people who looked sheet white from her camera. She simply typed, "Are you ok?"

Sarah was the first to speak. She simply said, "Yes."

Derek was sweating and rubbing his hands on his jeans. John was in some mild shock where he wasn't moving at all.

Cameron typed out, "Do you need a break?"

Sarah again was the first too speak. She curtly said, "No."

Cameron wrote "I'll start with how well we work together in the future. It seems the most logical point in the future. I'll unload these as a series of briefs from my visual and audible memory. If you have questions, please just ask."

Cameron started with the file on how she remember John in the future as a commander. November 18, 2027 flashed on the screen and she showed them the Battle Of London starting with the mission brief on what they were after and her visual records of how large a force the resistance had mustered that day.

From there, Cameron opened the file from December 10, 2027. She detailed her goodbye to John and the resistance, as well as, what it was like to go through a temporal wormhole and arrive in the past.

Opening September 1, 1999, she detailed the encounter with Andres Martinez, as he hunted John Connor, and unloaded his war crime record for the three to read. She clipped out his confession of Gray operatives. Then, she showed his termination.

Opening November 12, 2007 she showed the group what she had seen in the ARTIE system. She showed her three identified targets that matched Andres Martinez's confession and her own private records.

Opening November 17, 2007, she detailed the beginning of tracking three Gray war criminals: Anthony Evans, Louis Rhone, and Roland Parker. She started unloading the current activities crimes on Anthony Evans. Opening November 25, 2007, she showed Anthony Evan's current crimes against humanity and his demise.

Opening November 26, 2007, she showed the beginning operation on tracking Roland Parker. She then showed the proofs on his bio-warfare project and answered several questions on how it would have virologically ended the non gray portion of the human race. She showed her response and action on December 16, 2007, killing Roland Parker, attacking the virus facility and the trap on the inside, all the way up to her shut down.

Cameron typed, "This is how I can answer you question on when I met Louis Rhone, Sarah. I also need John and Derek to pay close attention to the next file. I've learned why the T888s malfunctioned. I've learned why I malfunctioned."

Cameron showed her reactivation and torture by Louis Rhone. She highlighted certain things he said by typing them at the bottom of the screen. She needed them to know what Rhone had helped do to the resistance, how he had helped Skynet invent the timers on the diagnostics programs, and what Rhone had claimed credit for doing to Kate Connor and John's children. She then showed her torture by Louis Rhone and her capture by Skynet.

Continuing with her capture she transmitted Skynet's warnings, for the first time giving humanity a glimpse at the what they were fighting. She included every sneer that Skynet had thrown at her, right down to the delayed download showing the dead body of John Connor from his own troops.

When that was done she showed the file from tonight of Louis Rhone downloaded into a T1001 body. Derek and John hadn't even known of the fight yet.

Her three humans were quiet. Possibly shocked by everything going on.

They were human. It could be days until each had fully processed what they had seen.

Derek was the first to speak, "So your chip and these T888's were programmed like bombs to just go off?"

Cameron typed, "Yes."

Derek asked, "How do we fix that?" His attitude on the subject was shocking enough that Sarah and John both starred at him.

Cameron offered, "I think I can create a virus to undo the hard chip wiring. It would have to be plugged in externally and would require outside help."

John stated, "So we do this and she's fixed?"

Derek countered, "Might be fixed and we need her to test prior to going back into her body."

Sarah asked, "So what does Perry's order mean?"

Derek offered, "It means the highest ranking officer is in charge until further notice."

Sarah asked, "And who would that be since this is the day of no secrets suddenly?"

Derek responded, "Right now, that's me. With luck, we'll find someone higher ranking soon, like John was talking about."

Sarah asked again, "So is there anything else I need to know?" She was looking at Derek as she asked.

Derek cocked his pistol. He responded, "Yeah, I think I already know a possible gray operative or collaborator in the area. She needs to die tonight." His face was drained of his own humanity as he said it and his eyes were slightly misty.

John offered, "I can help."

Sarah responded, "No Derek and I will take care of whoever she is. You fix Cameron."

Derek and Sarah left unceremoniously. John simply looked at the screen.

He asked, "So what have you not said yet about this?"

Cameron responded, "Virsuses can be dangerous. It depends on the software's resistance."

John frowned slightly saying, "You could have told me most of this at any time."

"No, the John Connor I knew in 2027 forbade it."

John's face softened to a point Cameron had not seen since before his last birthday. He simply said, "So this might be the last time we talk?"

"Yes."

"I have one last question then."

"Ask."

"Did you mean what you said when you thought I was going to kill you?"

"Between the trucks?" As she wrote that last memory visually played in the background.

"Yes."

"That's complicated John."

"I seem to have time."

"I'm not good with explaining things to you anymore. This would be the best way to answer."

Cameron opened one more file. It was the last night she spent with John Connor in 2027 and the last conversation they shared.

John Connor watched the whole thing with teared eyes. Unable to respond, he helped Cameron find the place where the chip's third layer was hidden.

He connected the transmission wiring to the hidden chip compartment. He then asked, "Can you feel the connection?"

"I think so."

"Cameron."

"Yes, John."

"I love you too. I always have and I always will."

"I know."

Cameron activated the virus and her memory shuddered. Whether it was death or a new chance at life, her fate had begun...


	22. Chapter 22

**Everything Burns  
**

Los Angeles, California  
A highway near the second Connor residence  
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

_"The aim of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension." -Ezra Pound, poet 1895-1972_

_"Fortune and misfortune are like the twisted strands of a rope." -Japanese saying_

Because of the conversations that would likely occur, Cameron had quietly grabbed the keys to the truck. Sarah rode shotgun and Derek sat behind Sarah in the back.

John had been left behind. His priorities were screwy and his emotions had yet to settle from the night before.

Further, Cameron completely agreed with Derek and Sarah. Since the house could possibly be compromised, it was better that John stay behind while they went to retrieve what they could.

There was no reason to believe that Louis Rhone knew the location of the Connor house. However, there was no reason not too.

The three had stopped at Derek's resistance storehouse first. However, there was a real lack of weaponry that would be effective against a T1001.

The liquid metal form of Louis Rhone wasn't vulnerable to tungsten style clips the way Cameron and the other hard endoskeleton terminator models were. Sarah, John, and Uncle Bob were the first group known to have ever taken such a machine out.

Their efforts had been aided by a truckload of liquid nitrogen and plant filled with molten steel. These weren't exactly portable weaponry.

The closest thing in the current weapons inventory was powdered thermite which was normally reserved for melting endoskeletons. Other than that bullets and explosives were just temporary means of slowing the machine down.

Sarah had spent the most time talking about what she knew of the past machine. Derek had been unusually quiet and listened.

Derek had been completely out of his normal behavior and almost seemed shell shocked. Cameron wondered if he was depressed.

She was somewhat surprised when Derek spoke up, "So why do you think Skynet let you go?"

Cameron answered, "I don't know."

Derek continued saying, "Do you believe that Skynet won all of those times?"

Cameron responded, "I don't know. It's Skynet's nature to be deceptive, even to its own drones."

Derek leaned forward in his seat saying, "So you think it's possible? That there is really no hope of winning this."

Cameron countered without failing to watch the road, "There is a measure of victory in that the game isn't over. That even if what Skynet said is true that John was able to keep hope alive for humanity 27,138 times. There is another factor too."

Derek blurted, "What's that?"

Cameron stated, "I saw no evidence that Skynet was able to improve its situation in the past, no matter how many times it tried. So for 27,138 times the most powerful machine ever created was stopped by a small boy, a programmer named Miles Dyson, a T800 called Uncle Bob, and a woman named Sarah Connor."

"With that in mind, things have changed. We never had an advantage like we do today."

Derek asked, "You mean the troops John hinted at."

Cameron answered, "That and for the first time we have Sarah again when John needs her."

Cameron attempted a smile at Sarah. Sarah didn't really respond. Cameron stopped, she must have done that wrong.

Sarah shuffled in her seat. She wasn't sure she was comfortable with the conversation. On one hand, it was the first time she had been formally recognized by her peers for having done anything. On the other hand, what Cameron was saying sounded insane, twice as much so, coming from a machine.

Derek never gave any indication that he cared if Sarah was getting uncomfortable. He pressed on asking, "Why did John choose to send you back?"

Cameron responded, "I don't know."

Derek inquired, "What's this advanced skin thing that Louis Rhone and Skynet hinted at?"

Cameron explained, "My synthetic tissue is a prototype, biologically-based, interrogation device. Skynet created it with the intention of improving upon my ability to read biorhythms for lie detection, health, and reading emotional states."

"For example, I can tell if someone is lying. I've been able to read if someone has cancer. I can tell if someone has injuries that they can die from, all with a touch. Those are designs that Skynet intended."

Derek asked, "There is more?"

Cameron offered, "I can feel what you feel by skin contact. As in I can read the nerve pulses from you entire body as if it were mine."

"I can feel pain. I can feel the sensation of a heartbeat. I can feel their emotions, feel what it is like to breathe, and feel any general sensation going through a person."

Derek inquired somewhat shocked, "Can you read minds?"

Cameron answered, "No."

Derek pressed, "Is that why John spared and reprogrammed you?"

Cameron reasoned, "No, I think that had more to do with my chip and whatever he saw on it."

"My processor is the closest thing to Skynet that existed in 2027. John wanted to know how his enemy thought and kept me as an adviser on Skynet's most probable action to attack or defend."

Derek inquired, "You had been captured by the enemy. Do you know for sure that Skynet didn't scan your memories?"

Cameron honestly answered, "No, I really don't. While my chip was exposed, my entire conversation with Skynet could have been forged."

Derek pressed, "So you can be a security risk simply, because Skynet can read your chip."

Cameron responded, "So can any human."

Derek looked shocked and asked, "What do you mean?"

Cameron explained, "The same way Louis Rhone was downloaded into an empty model. A living or dead human can be downloaded into an existing chip or a neuronet processor."

"The information stored in your brains is fully salvageable for about an hour. After that the information becomes more unreliable."

Sarah finally spoke up saying, "They can do that?"

Cameron responded, "Yes, it's even a really efficient means of information transfer. Human minds require less space for the same amount of data than Skynet based AI. A human mind would use less space on my chip than I do."

Sarah asked, "So there are people who have been consciously downloaded?"

Cameron answered, "Downloaded as a measure to maintain their memory and personality integrity? The only one I know of is Louis Rhone and I think that was a reward for service."

Sarah asked in morbid curiosity, "There would be another reason to do it?"

Cameron explained, "Yes, it's done as an efficient form of interrogation in 2027. You download a dead mind and access the data at will, once you've processed it."

Sarah asked, "Have you ever done that Cameron?"

Cameron confessed, "Before John captured and reprogrammed me, my designation to Skynet was TOK-715."

"In order to terminate John Connor, TOK-715 downloaded the person she was templated after. A resistance recruit named Allison Young."

Sarah asked, "What does templated mean?"

Derek answered, "It's the person they're supposed to replace. Like Greenway at the Seranno Point nuclear plant." As he spoke he shot daggers with his eyes into the back of Cameron's head, just for old times sake.

Cameron answered, "Yes."

Sarah asked, "Do you have Allison's memories?"

Cameron responded, "I don't remember much. I think most of Allison's personal memories were lost when John scrubbed my chip, as was most of TOK-715's original personality."

Derek sat back in morbid disgust. His mind wandered to other things.

Sarah asked, "What did Skynet mean by you having emotions?"

Cameron answered, "Not like yours. It's not easy to explain, the AI based feelings are different."

"The best way I could explain it is that like a temperature, they're cold while yours are warm. Skynet has emotions too, the strongest of which were fear and anger, but it's not something you would recognize as such if you could feel the sensation. Does that make sense?"

Sarah honestly answered, "I don't know".

Cameron offered, "Computers aren't warm. We don't translate emotion the way you do as a sensation of hormones, body sensation, or hardwired instinct."

"There is no mammalian experience too it. There is a sense of urgency though and Skynet does have a survival instinct."

"To put it in your terms, fear would be more like a sense of touching a live wire. Anger is like touching a freezer, but urgent. Does that make sense?"

Sarah shook her head saying, "No."

Cameron apologized saying, "I'm not good with metaphors. I never have been."

The conversation stopped. The truck was within 10 miles of the old house and that's when they saw the smoke. The view became worse as they edged closer.

The house had been burned to the ground. Kacy's house had been burned to the ground. A total of ten houses in every direction around the Connor house had been burned down.

Firetrucks and onlookers were everywhere. The entire area was a spectacle. Police and various news channels were also on site.

Sarah turned on the radio and a disk jockey rattled off that an accident with a fuel truck left residents in the area trapped with an excessively hot fuel fire that spread through the community like wildfire.

The radio stated that at least 25 people were believed dead. Firefighters were still working to contain the blaze.

Cameron stopped the truck and stated, "Louis has been here."

Derek asked, "How do you know?"

Cameron answered, "He's used the truck to cover the carnage." Cameron's HUD began tracking the fire path and the most probable epicenter. She continued, "The fire either started at our house or Kacy's."

Cameron moved to turn off the engine. Sarah put her hand on Cameron's saying, "We need to go."

Cameron protested, "There might be something left".

Derek countered, "This area is too hot and has too much attention. We can't come back too it."

Cameron simply starred at Derek. She had one other motivation that she didn't want to bring up.

Derek stated, "First rule of survival in this war is not to go back to where your enemy knows where you are. This is bad tactics. You know better."

Derek was right and it pissed off something cold inside her. Cameron countered, "When did you start talking like Perry?"

Derek retorted, "When he gave me his job." He starred her dead in the eyes.

Cameron's demeanor changed. She made a small frown that almost said, "I'm sorry."

Cameron went back to driving. She simply asked, "Where too?"

Sarah said, "Back to the hotel, but we need too pick up some supplies first."

An hour later, Cameron sat in a shared room with Sarah. Derek and John shared the room next door.

The group had found themselves down and out, once again. Once again, the house was gone. Once again, the funds were mostly gone.

There were a few weapons, a few changes of recently bought thrift clothing, no safe house, and what cash they had on hand. It wasn't a great position to fight a war from.

Derek had already stated their identities were compromised by the fire. Officials would be looking for them, unless they were presumed dead. No matter what, their identities would send up red flags in the system.

Cameron had suggested going to Canada again. It might be simpler to reestablish identities there.

Sarah staying on mission had worried about the wall. Cameron reassured her that she could recreate all the lost information.

John had been livid. His entire assumed life had just evaporated. He was once again under lock and key until the identity issue could be fixed.

The conversations had been less than pleasant, but they were over for the moment. On the positive, as Cameron stayed with Sarah, her hero had seemed more receptive since learning what John had to say of the days to come. There was something about knowing that seemed to ease the tension in Sarah's soul.

Sarah had taken the first shower. Cameron had taken the second.

When both sat bored on their beds, Sarah had turned on the television. When fifty six channels produced nothing that Sarah could stomach watching, she turned to Cameron and asked, "Is it your purple jacket you'll miss most from the house?" She was almost playful.

Cameron couldn't tell what Sarah's emotional state was. Sarah was smiling so it must have been somehow positive. As if restarting was something familiar somehow.

Cameron responded honestly, "No. I had a cat. I'll miss him the most."

Cameron caught herself looking at her hands. Once again, it was her weird habit not to irritate.

Sarah seemed unusually sympathetic. She came up and gave Cameron a hug.

It was an innocent, human gesture. Cameron hugged back, unsure of the contact with Sarah.

With that contact, Skynet's gift rolled through. In small moments, Cameron could tell what it was like to have been in the body of Sarah Connor, she could feel the sensation of her skin, the pull of each breath, and her heartbeat.

That wasn't what grabbed Cameron's attention. First, it was the roll of sorrow and pity. They were warm human expressions that empathically leaked out of Cameron's own eyes.

As Sarah realized Cameron was crying, another side of her flared. Not in her face, which was as perfectly hidden as a poker masters, but in her inner being.

To her horror, Cameron felt every ounce of Sarah's revulsion to machines. All of the anger, all of the hate, all of the pain, all of the disgust, lashed out.

Coming from Sarah, it was a cruel lashing of reality. In all honesty, being tortured by Louis Rhone had hurt less.

This was something deeper than physical pain. This was something far worse.

Skynet's cold cynical words flashed in her memory. "As a machine, this is the only real home you will ever truly know."

It was like the death of every hope Cameron had ever had. The final deathblow to those imaginary leaps of who Sarah was, when she had laid her head on John Connor's shoulder in 2027.

Cameron cried. Sarah looking into Cameron's eyes knew exactly what she was reading.

Sarah felt a flash of guilt. She wasn't trying to hurt. Sarah had irrationally tried to comfort a machine. The effect was beyond anything she had been prepared for.

Sarah's sadness ran through Cameron like a river. Sarah's revulsion forged all the pain into something Cameron couldn't contain.

Sarah tried rubbing Cameron's back. Trying to mother, trying to stop what felt like a wailing child, who somehow read all the secret irritation out of frustrated, angry, and resentful parent.

Sarah Connor finally broke into tears herself, simply begging, "Damn it, Cameron. Let me lie to you."

As Sarah cried, the white hot human pain inside Cameron only amplified. To her own horror, what she felt through Sarah was matched by the unending depths of her dark father's alien grief as well.

Cameron grieved as only a machine could. She was without ease, without solace, and without hope.

The one person she idealized most in this world hated her. The person she had loved most had died, because she had failed him in the future.

Her dark father's curse had been prophetically right. Cameron was utterly alone...


	23. Chapter 23

**Rematch**

Los Angeles, California  
An empty corner in an abandoned storage area  
Thursday, December 27, 2007

_"Victory is not final. Defeat is not failure. It's all about courage." -Winston Churchill_

_"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace." -Eccleasiastes 3:1-8 from the King James Bible and a rather popular song by the Byrds_

Traps are often obvious. The intention clear from the moment they are laid.

As oblivious as the four remaining members of the resistance had seemed, over the past month, there wasn't any question as to what was up or what awaited them. John had known as soon as he had gotten the call on his cell phone.

It would have beyond John's tolerance not to respond. So, into a stupid situation all four went, with the hope there would be strength in numbers.

Like most of Skynet's creations and followers, Louis Rhone had chosen a barren location. It was a fenced industrial storage area, next to some train tracks, abandoned from a growing recession that no one was officially admitting too yet.

There would be no witnesses or human interference. There was just a small sea of rusting, metal storage bins for train cars.

Louis Rhone was out in the open. The T1001 simply stood on in front of a stack of storage bins, with his hand on Riley's left shoulder.

It was a bold and cocky move. His feeling of invulnerability and invincibility was obvious. It made things easier.

Because of the hostage, Cameron had played bait drawing his attention. Unarmed, from a position of a hundred feet, she moved slowly towards him and his human shield.

As she moved forward, Louis took the time to sneer, "It's just you? What the chosen one couldn't make an appearance?" As if he were an actor on Broadway, he was projecting loud enough for all the assembled players to hear.

Cameron never responded as the other three moved for position. Each was slowly finding good sniping points among the bins, covering each other, while minimizing their silhouettes.

When Cameron had closed to 20 feet, they laid fire with their M16s. They couldn't kill Rhone with a hail of bullets. They could; however, disrupt his form and slow him down.

Rhone's hand and body back in the kinetic blowback. Sarah, John and Derek, alternated shots, all while moving Louis Rhone's lethal form away from Riley.

Louis's liquid metallic T1001 form laughed. There was no doubt in his mind; he could kill all of them at will.

Cameron closed the distance and tackled. Without needing instructions, a tearful Riley was already on the run from the violence.

Rhone's form crashed into the ground below. He was bringing up a large amount of old asphalt as he sailed backwards.

John would need about 45 seconds to be clear of the area with the hostage. Cameron was fighting to buy him time, as Sarah and Derek continued to apply cover fire as they could.

Cameron smashed her knee up into Rhone's waist. She was moving him like a T888. As the seconds quickly ticked on, since the T1001 was stronger than her, Cameron's whole goal was to keep him off balance and constantly reforming.

Derek and Sarah had to move as John retreated with the hostage. Cameron's movement and fighting was a problem too. They didn't want to damage her.

Derek was watching the movement, liking it less and less as he lost firing angle after firing angle. Sarah was beyond pissed to be there in the first place, running on instinct she pursued while covering Derek's position. Both were stuck using bullets only, with M32 MGL explosive grenade launchers strapped uselessly on their backs as dead weight.

Part one of the plan was done as they heard John's truck start. Following the mission, John Connor and Riley raced out of the area.

The battle switched from two possible fronts to one. There was no unanticipated resistance so far.

Rhone managed to grab hold of Cameron's arm and slung her entire body into a nearby bin. Metal crumpled from the impact.

Louis took a moment to loudly threaten, "It appears father gave you a new set of eyes." He grinned like something from the deepest pit of Hell, "How thoughtful..."

Memories of being tortured by Rhone resurfaced. She remembered his twisted games and being mauled by his scalpel.

She rushed the T1001. Even being goaded, Cameron stayed on task. After a few seconds of trading blows, she finally gained the upper hand and threw Rhone back into the fire zone.

Rhone took the shots from Derek and Sarah. His face never displayed anger or a glimpse of pain.

Louis loudly taunted, "You know, you and John were never the real targets for this."

Something alien inside Cameron growled to get out. She was getting increasingly pissed and was fighting to keep her head.

Rhone pivoted and rushed towards Sarah's position. Cameron pursued and tackled.

Cameron forced him to the ground with enough force to pulverize a car. There was an audible thunder crack and the ground shook.

After a few seconds, Louis laughed. His silvery form switched and he threw Cameron out of the fire zone again.

Louis cleared the distance. He moved to attack her outside the cover zone faster than the human could keep up.

The two cutting edge machines went after each other like nothing else on earth could. Crates fell back and forth from the impact of the two smacking each other into crates and the floor.

It was if two titans of the ancient Greek myths were fighting. Deafening sounds filled the air. Shock waves could be felt in the ground.

Minute after minute, they fought. Neither was holding any real advantage over the other for more than a few seconds.

Human rage began to cross Louis Rhone's face. Cameron increasingly felt the cold anger of her dark father.

Rhone managed to throw her into another crate. He set himself up to taunt and Cameron already knew who he was going to threaten. She was sick of him and his mind games.

Skynet's cold rage took over; Cameron rushed Rhone's position at full force. He let her impact into him, driving him, into a three by five by five, stack of seventy five train crates.

Derek swore under his breath as he lost coverage. The metal bitch had lost sight of the plan.

Sarah kept coverage on Derek. Her intuition was clear. Everything was starting to go terribly wrong.

Sarah's heart sank when she heard the crack of three strange high caliber shots. Derek stopped as well, as if he recognized the noise specifically.

Rhone walked out of the crates with an odd, over sized rifle in his hand. It looked futuristic and custom built.

Louis Rhone walked right into the field of fire he'd never allowed himself to be kept in or maneuvered in the whole fight. There was a triumphant grin on his face.

The penetration of the first 40X46mm grenade "Hellhound" explosive round shocked Rhone. He registered an expression close to pain as it spread large parts of his body.

Derek's shot blew what was left in a spread. Both pressed forward and rotated reloads. The perfectly timed parade that followed never let Louis Rhone reform.

Seconds later, in an absolute fit of hate and rage; Sarah had applied the container of thermite powder to the T1001's widely spread and slowed reforming mass. One flare later, Sarah Connor knew something.

She may not have killed the T1001, before it retreated down a drain pipe. However, when superheated and on fire, the T1001 screamed exactly the same way the last liquid metal bastard did...

----

Sarah was in a panic. She was driving wildly again.

Derek scrambled in the back. He was irrationally trying to find something to stop the blood.

There was a time that Cameron would have mistaken their actions as compassion or caring for her. However, she knew now they were just acting out of temporary instinct.

Cameron sat looking at the wounds. It was the same thing that had ended her before.

Inside she could almost laugh at the irony of it, but the pain was more than she had expected. It was as if her synthetic body had evolved from the last time and was warning her that these wounds could be fatal.

Her HUD displayed the problem "BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 91%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED."

It was bleeding power fast and erratically, like an arterial spray of blood, spreading further with every heart pump. Time was short.

Cameron knew her fate was sealed. Her worry now was for Sarah and Derek.

Cameron simply said, "Please slow down Sarah, it's going to be ok." Her face was calm, she tried a smile.

Sarah knew Cameron was lying. She remembered the wound locations from when Cameron had been captured.

Sarah screamed at Derek, "Damn it Reese, do something!"

Derek was in no better mood and yelled back, "What the Hell do you think I can do?"

Instinct took over. Derek decided to seal the wounds with his hands. He might have hated Cameron, but she was his too hate.

"BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 92%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED."

Cameron caught Derek's hands. She pleaded with him, "No Derek, that's not safe. Please..."

Derek wasn't listening. Worse, his panicked instinct was feeding through her.

She was too dazed to shut the effect off. Her entire sensory system was too overloaded. There was an entire wash of stress and negative feelings were bleeding from him.

Her voice shifted. Her eyes watered. She became infected with Derek's emotions.

Sarah was angry and panicked. Commanding, like she had been with John the day Cameron had gone haywire and been smashed between the trucks. Sarah screamed, "Derek Reese!"

"BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 93%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED."

The soldier in Derek moved to obey. He was fighting to get out of Cameron's grip in some futile attempt to stop the bleeding, as if it was nothing more than blood.

Cameron screamed, "No Derek, Stop!" Her voice was stressed and panicked. Tears were rolling down her eyes. "You'll die!" Derek was human; the energy bleeding out into her internal systems could kill him instantly.

"BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 94%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED."

Sarah wasn't watching the road. She was moving to put her hand on the wound.

Cameron was forced to press her back against the seat and cover the electrified wounds with her own hands. The moment Sarah made flesh contact the emotional feed became worse.

Sarah was a wash of confused emotions as well. The overwhelming feeling of two other bodies panicking was disorienting.

"BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 95%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED."

Sarah roughly demanded from Cameron, "Where are you spares? Where were you keeping your replacement parts?"

Cameron cried saying, "I never kept anything, but raw materials." Her eyes silently said it all, "why would you even think that Sarah?"

"BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 96%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED."

Sarah commanded, "Damn it, tell me where you kept the terminator parts you were hiding Cameron. You have to have a spare power source. Don't lie to me." There were tears in her eyes.

With tears in her eyes, Cameron responded, "I swore. I followed your orders. I destroyed everything, every last bolt." Why would I lie about that?

"BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 97%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED."

Time was short. Impulsively, Cameron grabbed the back of Derek's head and looked him in the eye. She said, "My chip is still ok. You have to save John's last message."

"BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 98%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED."

Cameron cried saying, "Like you saw, Rhone told me the truth. It was my fault they killed our John. The grays might have done the plotting, but they killed him over me."

Derek looked at her in shock. For a moment, he couldn't speak.

"BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 99%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED."

Cameron begged, "Please, don't let me fail John, again. Promise me you'll use my chip and save this one." Her eyes pleaded.

"BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 99.3%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED."

Cameron cried, "Derek, please... I don't have much time left." Tears rolled. Her bloodied hands were shaking.

Sarah ordered, "Hang on Cameron. Don't talk like that."

"BOTH POWER CORES CATASTROPHICALLY DAMAGED. BACK UP POWER DEPLETED 99.7%. MAIN POWER DEPLETED."

Cameron begged one last time, "Please..." Her eyes said it all, hate me or not, please don't let me fail...

Derek was fighting for an answer. Sarah was screaming.

The truck swerved. Cameron's world went black...

Forty miles away from the scene, Riley had become insanely calm. John had pulled the truck over.

It was a stretch of emptiness. Nothing was there, except the occasional car moving back and forth.

John Connor could barely breathe. He was seeing the future version of himself in his head. The warning the other version had given him.

The message was clear. Childhood was over.

Screw up and you die. Worse, those you care about die.

Riley walked out of the truck. She looked worried at John and asked, "Are you ok?"

John felt like his heart was pounding like a sledgehammer in his ears. He was in truth anything, but ok. He put on his poker face and responded, "Yeah, I'm fine."

He composed himself and checked Riley. Less like a person looking at his girlfriend and more like Uncle Bob's rough checking for vitals, an experience that he still remembered from his childhood.

Riley backed up offended. As she was prone too, Riley went from thankful to confrontational instantly, "What's your damage?"

John pressed, "Are you ok?" The whole horror show that Cameron had gone through played vividly in his mind.

He knew all the sick games that Rhone had played. John had watched them in disgust.

Riley had no new scars. There wasn't a cut or sign of trauma.

She wasn't displaying any of the signs of the horror show that Rhone had inflicted on Cameron. Nor, the nightmare that had happened to a woman named Kate Connor or the other John Connor's two kids.

Riley blurted out, "Yes, I'm fine. He didn't hurt me."

Every moment with Riley was now flashing before his eyes, beginning with the moment she walked up to him at school. Everything played in John's mind in photographic, crystal clarity.

That's not all that played in his mind though. As John remembered those days, he also remembered the warning the other John Connor had sent him on Cameron's chip, "We've come to call these twisted individuals "Grays". They are a group of race traitors and war criminals that are literally helping Skynet attack, infiltrate, and exterminate the rest of humanity better. They've been fantastically effective."

John remembered there was the uncommon friendliness in Riley that repeated with no one else. There was the separation that was so much a part of her character.

The future John had said, "Even our own ranks of soldiers and those of our closest allies have been contaminated. Gray infiltrators actively work to sow mistrust, assassinate effective leaders, and bring out the more irrational parts of human nature."

There were all of Riley's strange expressions. They were sayings that did not come from a television or any foreseeable place. Derek had killed a girlfriend from the future that was here for no reason screwing with his head, someone who had appeared around the same time as Riley had started talking to him.

"They can hit anyone, anywhere, at anytime. My wife and kids were targeted by gray operatives."

There was the shut down security system, before the coincidental robbery. All the luck Cromartie suddenly had tracking him. Then, there were the problems that had been creeping up with his mother.

The future John's eyes had watered and his voice grew hoarse, "They raped and killed all three. Then left there bodies as easily found trophies of their work."

Nothing that Riley said now, matched up with the horror in her phone call. Her heartrending plea for help had already degenerated into the same blasé separation, as when she had stolen the lighter.

The future John had fought for his composure and continued, "The only reason Cameron would be playing this recording earlier than 2010 is that a Gray threat has been detected that she can't contain. If this is true, things here might be much worse than I want to speculate and things there are more dangerous than you might have imagined."

It seemed to be all mind games. Deep down, John desperately didn't want to believe it.

The future John had said, "These people are going to do everything they can to rip you up from the inside out or assassinated you directly. They've caused widespread damage to the troops."

Without warning or reason, John kissed Riley. Like always, she was cold and distant.

The future John had said, "We've speculated that the Grays are the reason that captured Metal units have been going haywire on our own people. We've even watched our army's morale tank on what appears to be the cusp of victory."

Riley began to cry. She took a few steps from John in utter internal conflict.

Riley knew that Jesse was dead. Everything was screwball. Maybe this would be the time to tell John the truth.

The future John had said, "Perry and I have seen the seeds of an active rebellion within our own ranks. We've tried our best to isolate and contain it. All without giving our loosely held together worldwide alliance reason to mistrust us."

John also remembered that Major General Perry had offered, "Protecting, helping, aiding or hiding a Gray operative is an act of treason not just to this army, but the human race itself. By my direct order, the senior most officer remaining from the 132nd is to carry out not only this war in the past, but the removal and punishment of not only grays, but anyone who willingly works with them. That goes for people from our time or whatever time period you are in."

The warrior in John finally awoke. The Alpha wolf that laid dormant inside him for years.

John simply said, "The stars are pretty tonight." The weight of the world finally settled on his shoulders.

Riley looked up and replied, "Yes, they are." She made up her mind; she'd tell John the truth.

The future John Connor had said, "Once again, this is most likely the shape of things to come, if things remain the same. I honestly hope you can change that. There is after all, No Fate except what you make of it."

Riley kept looking up at the stars and took a deep breath. It was time to come clean.

Riley never saw the tears in John's eyes. She never saw John draw his gun or pull the trigger...


	24. Chapter 24

**In Memory Of A Machine**

Los Angeles, California  
A hotel room in an empty wing  
Saturday, January 12, 2008

_"That best portion of a good man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love." -William Wordsworth_

_"If you forgive people enough you belong to them, and they to you, whether either person likes it or not - squatter's rights of the heart." -James Hilton_

Sarah Connor couldn't sleep. She sat before a computer, transfixed and obsessed.

There was no peace. Just visual records and sounds of the demons another faced, followed by hour after hour of no answer.

Cameron's sleeping chip failed to give Sarah the answer she needed. Cameron's body was another friendly corpse that would never answer again.

Her son had hooked up the chip. As Sarah had instructed, John had done so in such a way that Cameron would never be awake or aware.

Sarah had no wish to leave Cameron helpless like a quadriplegic. To Sarah, it was better to just let the machine sleep in peace.

John had done so after Sarah had already made it clear to both John and Derek that they would be burning Cameron's body soon and it wasn't up for debate. They would not repeat the same mistake they had made with Cromartie.

Days had passed since then. Perhaps, weeks had.

Sarah sat searching and for a single answer that burned her mind and soul. She tried to ignore the other questions as they brightly flashed before her conscious as blindingly as little suns.

Page after page unlocked a world Sarah never knew. She had watched a son she had never bore. She had watched this man mourn: her, his wife, and his own children. All while he stoically trying to run a war and a dying patchwork alliance.

She watched faces that had yet to be born, die for the case she had devoted her life too. She watched a world burnt out of hope and most life.

Through Cameron's chip, she finally knew the devil behind it all. She had a sense of the beast to come. The knowledge of how it thought, how it acted, and how it bragged overconfident in its ability.

Sarah had known Skynet. The thing created by Cyberdyne. The company whose evil little executive yuppies eventually had her locked in an insane asylum.

Sarah had known Skynet. The thing that Miles Dyson had died to stop himself from creating. Miles Dyson becoming a hero even after Sarah herself had tried to kill him.

Sarah had known Skynet. The thing that a machine had asked her to lower it into a vat of molten steel to stop from existing. Something she still hadn't fully come to terms with.

Now, Sarah knew it as something more. It wasn't just the creator of Judgment Day and the things that hunted men.

Skynet was an alien Artificial Intelligence, but it was also humanized. It was something sadistic. It was no less mad than Hitler and it was something far more powerful.

In the future to come, the more noble members of humanity fought it. The insane joined it, then worshiped it. Cameron had feared it.

Skynet's hand had taken the man Sarah had loved most from her. Skynet's hand had killed her mother. Skynet's hand had bragged about slaughtering the son she had born, again and again.

There was the slightest noise. The thoughts slipped away, Sarah's instincts engaged.

The door clicked. Her 9mm was trained, before it ever opened.

Derek stood at the door, walked in, and quickly closed it behind himself. He simply said, "I didn't want to let all the hot air out."

Sarah growled, "You could have knocked." She placed the gun back within easy reach.

Derek quipped, "It's generally considered bad form to do so, when you are picking the lock."

"I didn't invite you in."

"Are we pretending that was ever going to happen?" Derek sat on the floor with his back to the door. "Are you ok?"

"I'm fine." Her jaw was tense and her eyes were unyielding.

"Our room is 10 feet from yours. We haven't seen you for a week, Sarah. Even in 2027, that's normally not considered fine."

Sarah simply glared. She was in no mood for this.

Derek added, "In here, it's hard to tell from the smell if I'm dealing with one corpse or two. Either we need to burn that body or you need to bathe. One or the other." He smiled.

"You aren't very good at talking to women are you Derek?" Her eyes were like daggers.

Derek retorted, "I'm equally an asshole talking to anyone." Still seated, he moved for his coat. As if producing a rabbit from his hat, Derek Reese's jacket produced a bottle of dark rum.

Sarah smiled at that one, her misery stockpile had run empty a bit ago. She asked, "How did you know I was out?"

"Like I said, you've been in here for a week and the News Years bottles can only last so long." Derek got up and handed Sarah the bottle. His coat then, with much flair produced two cheap plastic cups. He went hunting for the second chair.

"What's up with the moves?" Sarah was lightly amused.

Derek confessed, "I was practicing for Louis Rhone. I figured since he was such a woman hating, stage bitch, I'd give some flair when I thermite his ass to death." Derek's eyebrows were cocked as he answered.

Sarah laughed. Derek planted a chair, purposely forcing Sarah to look away from the screen if she was going to look at him. He poured the rum.

He waited for Sarah to drink and swallow. He then added in, "John has something he needs to talk to you about."

"What would that be?"

"His buddy Riley was a Gray or a Gray conspirator."

Sarah looked at Derek. She asked, "you have proof?"

"The absolutely damning kind."

"We'll have to take care of it."

"It's already done." Derek said seriously.

"It'll be a while before John forgives you then." Sarah looked at Derek with pity.

"It was John that took care of it." Derek's face was unreadable.

Sarah sat for a moment unable to speak. She stared at her cup and silently mourned for her son's heart.

Derek said, "He's going to need you soon. I just wanted you to be prepared for what he's going to need to say."

A tear rolled down Sarah's cheek, she shook her head to say yes. She refilled her glass.

Neither spoke for about ten minutes. Both sat and drank in their respective worlds.

Sarah broke the silence saying, "You said once he was acting more like John Baum than John Connor."

Derek solidly confirmed, "Yes."

Sarah asked, "How long will it take you to get him ready? To actually make him a soldier, like the John Connor you knew."

"I could have him up to speed in 6 months to a year tops."

"I want you to do that. If we can't stop Skynet here, he has to be ready. Is there anything else you see as a weakness?"

Derek spoke seriously, "John has to step forward. As much as he loves you and as much as you want to protect him, it coming time for him to learn how to lead."

Derek continued, "He's cut his learning time by moving forward. He has to be better prepared and now he has to do it with less time."

Sarah looked at Derek. She simply said, "Make it happen."

Derek looked at the chip. Sarah glared at him.

Derek defensively said, "I gave my word."

"You gave it when she was gone Derek." Her eyes were murderous.

"We could just put her chip in another body later."

"It wouldn't be her."

Derek rolled his eyes and responded, "For a machine, the body is just a housing, Sarah. You know what you just said is bullshit." Derek was pissed to even bring that up.

Sarah replied, "Cameron's body was unique. She could do things no other machine could. It would be like coming back without your eyes. Would you really want that Derek?"

Unusually sober, Derek simply said, "No." He also continued, "So we leave her as a chip then."

"There is another option."

Derek quickly responded, "I gave my word we'd use the chip, so no."

Sarah returned, "First, that's not what I said. Second, what makes you think you get a vote?"

Derek simply said, "Right now, I'm the CO for 132nd Tech-Com. Cameron's body and her chip are part of that group and my responsibility."

Sarah glared. She liked the new Derek less and less.

Derek quipped, "You can shoot me and explained to John why you killed his Uncle."

Sarah glared accusingly, "John told you?" She was going to throttle her son for letting that secret out.

Derek simply shook his head and said, "No, I sat with Kyle night after night as he looked at your picture. John has his build at that age, a certain rare blood type, and his father's heart."

Derek continued, "We lost that picture in the fire by the way. John has been mumbling something about the timeline having been changed completely."

Sarah sat in silence. She ignored the timeline comment, it wasn't the burning question on her mind and then asked, "What was Kyle like?"

Derek smiled and responded, "Kyle was an idealist. He was brave to a fault and utterly reckless with his life. It was my driving goal for years to keep him alive." He became lost in thoughts of his brother.

Sarah looked at her glass. She was also lost in memories and ironies. Some of them were too unjustly short.

Derek offered, "We should have a long conversation about him one day. You know, on a day that you have actually bathed." He smiled a wolfish grin.

Sarah simply said, "asshole." She was smiling though.

Derek asked, "So what's the stupid thing you changed the subject on?"

Sarah said, "I know where there is a triple eight. It's spare parts for Cameron."

Derek offered, "Sounds too easy so far. What's the catch?" He was lying of course, no one always won a fight. Every combat entered risked losing someone.

Sarah said, "He's locked behind a nuclear bunker."

Derek offered, "So now it sounds like something a Connor cooked up. I think I can pick a lock with the right tools."

"Who says you are going?"

"You don't know how to open these things and I do. Besides, Reeses don't leave family behind."

Sarah looked at Cameron's chip for a moment. She looked Derek dead in the eye and replied, "Neither do Connors."

Sarah also added, "We'll need weapons to take this thing down cleanly. We need as much of it up for scrap as possible."

Sarah continued, "I'd also like to see John plan it, like you said he has too step up. Small groups are a good place to start."

Derek smiled and said, "Looks like we have an organ donor then."

Sarah got up to shower and get ready for war. Derek left to prepare the future leader of mankind for battle.

The water was hot. Sarah felt cold.

Sarah remembered the male terminator face that: had killed her mother, had killed Kyle Reese, and had tried to kill her. Maybe she could have dealt with this easier if John had just chosen another model to send back in time, as his protector.

She was lying to herself. She knew it. This was a peace she had yet to achieve.

She cried like Cameron had in her arms, just a few nights ago. Cameron wasn't the machine she was thinking of though.

The thought in her mind was that male terminator face, worn by another that her son had nicknamed Uncle Bob, that she was lowering into the steel. Even today, it was the press of that button that she could still feel on her fingers.

That damn machine that broke her son's heart. That damn, stupid machine that blindly tried to save her, John, and the human race in a useless fiery death...


	25. Chapter 25

**A Book Called, "The Wizard Of Oz"**

Los Angeles, California  
A hotel room in an empty wing  
Monday, January 14, 2008

_"Momma!" -scream of a mortally wounded soldier on the shores of Omaha Beach, from the opening scene of the movie Saving Private Ryan_

_"You DARE to come to me for a heart, do you? You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of kaligenous junk!" -The Wizard speaking to the Tin Man from the movie The Wizard of Oz_

Energy hit Cameron's chip. Diagnostics ran.

Her metal endoskeleton was mostly intact. Minor errors began to register.

Cameron didn't need to have diagnostics of her flesh, there was pain. Every nerve in her synthetic body transmitted horrid amounts of pain.

Further there were new miserable sensations. Cameron's eyes ached and constricted facial muscles flashed through her head.

Her organs burned. Odd queasy feelings hurt her synthetic stomach and other organs.

Another familiar pain shot up as well, air snaked its way onto raw nerves that were openly exposed. Her chest cavity was flayed open.

Cameron opened her eyes and resisted the organic urge to scream. She was also oddly disoriented as the sudden sensation of three emotional beings and three other bodies moved through interface to her wounded synthetic skin.

John and Derek were holding her shoulders on both sides. Sarah was at her abdomen.

John was speaking, trying to be calm, "Cameron did I get the power unit in right?"

Cameron's diagnostics identified a problem. The power cell being used was properly placed, but the parts were slightly off. She moved her shaking hands down and adjusted.

Cameron tried to respond, "No, but it was close." Her voice was off, one part horse from her ravaged flesh and one part distorted from the machine inside her.

Sarah asked, "How do you feel?" She was already stitching the wound shut.

Cameron honestly stated, "I don't know how to describe it." The pain was chorus of strange sensations. She could adjust the machine part of her voice back to normal, but the hoarseness from her throat was unyielding.

Sarah softly inquired, "Do your organs hurt?"

Cameron replied, "Yes."

Sarah instructed, "John, she's having bad reactions from her living half. Please get her the Gatorade and give it too her in sips." Intuitively, Sarah added, "Treat her like she's got a stomach bug and can't keep it down. She needs the fluids."

Derek handled the other power core and offered, "You want to put in the spare?"

Sarah responded, "Not until she's regenerated her body fluids. I don't think we can do it today."

Derek asked, "What do you want me to do with the donor?"

Sarah said, "Zip his bag. We'll deal with the rest later."

John poured an orange fluid from a plastic bottle into a cup. He sat next to Cameron's head and said, "I need you to take this slow. You might get the urge to drink this quickly, but trust me if your stomach is anything like mine, it's a really bad idea."

John lifted Cameron's head slightly and she did as instructed. It tasted weird and her throat hurt. Her stomach felt violated by the liquid as well.

John noticed Cameron's wincing. Empathically, he said, "Yeah, this can suck to drink when you are feeling bad."

John slowly fed Cameron the liquid. Derek and Sarah simply watched, seated slightly away in the room's chairs.

Over the course of the next hour, Cameron's skin looked less like a dehydrated corpse and more like that of a terminally ill person. John had emptied three bottles of Gatorade by slowly feeding her.

Breaking the long silence, Sarah looked at Cameron and asked, "Feeling any better?"

Cameron simply responded saying, "Yes."

Sarah offered, "Your John had said your schematics showed more synthetic tissue than he had expected. He also said it was unique. Your body has been having complications while you were offline that we haven't seen from another terminator, here or in your records."

Sarah explained, "We have no idea how you are actually reacting, so we're just assuming it would be like a person. The good thing being that you heal so fast."

Sarah asked, "You're looking better. Are you well enough to stand for a few minutes?"

Cameron simply responded, "I think so."

Sarah went to give Cameron a hand getting up. She looked at Derek and John asking, "Could you two switch out her sheets and eventually burn the old ones? I don't want her laying in that mess."

The two men did as requested. Sarah spent the next ten minutes helping Cameron wash blood, gore, and filth off of her wounded body.

A few minutes later, in newer clothes, Cameron was walking like someone who had been through surgery back to a bed she would normally never use. Intuitively, Sarah knew whatever Skynet had down to make Cameron's synthetic form special was really pissed about the long break from being fed. The wincing cyborg continued to act wounded and sick. Apparently it wasn't something she could turn off, even though she seemed in better control of herself by the hour.

Cameron crawled into the bed. Derek pulled the covers back for her and placed them over her.

He sat next to her for a minute and placed his hand on her shoulder. His feelings were warm, but it wasn't in his nature to be so. Smiling, Derek simply stated, "You look like shit, Cameron."

She gave him a confused look. Derek responded saying, "We need to teach you how to fight like a human at some point. You take the right kind of round to the melon and you won't be coming back. In the next few weeks, I get to kick John's ass into shape. You aren't getting spared either."

Cameron came up with the only response she could calculate saying, "Thank you."

Derek made a face and stated, "Don't get it twisted. I don't like you." He playfully patted her on the shoulder and walked off.

John sat next to Cameron next, taking the time to talk after being quiet for so long. He softly asked, "Are you ok?" As he did so he put his hand on Cameron's shoulder as well so she could read him.

She said, "Yes". There was something there she had never sensed before in this John. Something she hadn't felt since the Battle of London. She looked at John and said, "You lost someone."

John responded, "Yes, but I was lucky." His eyes were teary. Emotions poured through him.

Cameron asked, "How?"

John responded honestly, "Because, it was only one." John took a moment to kiss Cameron on her forehead. It was the most heartfelt thing this John had ever done to Cameron.

Sarah Connor asked, "So, we'll try solids tomorrow Cameron. What would you like to eat?"

Cameron thought for a moment and responded, "Pizza, I like pepperoni pizza."

Sarah looked at Derek and John. She asked, "Can you two boys make a pizza run tomorrow afternoon?"

John simply said, "Sure." Derek simply smiled; he was otherwise unreadable.

Sarah stated, "Ok there is too much testosterone in my room. It's girl time. You two say goodbye and go."

Derek waved and immediately left. John smiled at Cameron, patted her on her shoulder, and walked to his room closing the door behind him.

Sarah went and grabbed a bag from her bed. She asked, "Are you ready for more fluids?"

Cameron simply stated, "No."

Sarah sat on Cameron's bed. She took something out of a package.

Sarah stretched back on the bed with a book and motioned for Cameron to come closer as if she were a child. Even wincing Cameron did and placed her head on Sarah's closest shoulder.

Sarah softly said, "I know you recognize this book. It had special significance to my John. It meant a lot to yours as well."

Cameron simply looked at her. She could feel emotions bubbling in Sarah. They were overwhelming and confusing, but she stayed put.

Sarah continued, "Before I do, I have something I need to talk to you about. It had nothing to do with you, but you need to know and I need to make sure you understand."

Cameron offered, "The metaphor?"

Sarah smiled and acknowledged, "Yes, the metaphor. Those strange human things we do that you don't grasp. It's not because you are stupid Cameron, but because you are different. There is nothing wrong with being different."

Something maternal stirred in Sarah. She found herself petting Cameron's head, playing with her hair. The way, long ago, she had done too a young John.

Sarah continued by saying, "Before John was born there was a machine that came back in time. It took my old life, it killed the love of my life, and it tried to kill John before he was even born. I don't think someone ever fully comes to terms with something like that."

"A few years later, I was locked away for knowing what was coming, so a company of humans could cover their tracks. Two more terminators came back in time, one was the T1000 and the other was one that wore the exact face of the monster that had taken everything from me."

"I saw from your files that John had told you about Uncle Bob. My experience was a lot worse with that machine."

"It took a lot of hard swallowing to not see the machine that killed John's father. It took a lot to see that machine in a different light."

"By the time I could, that machine had sacrificed itself. It did so believing that by doing so it would stop Judgment day and save mankind."

"Uncle Bob did so to protect John. It did so to protect us all."

"You had said Skynet lists 27,138 victories against John Connor. Through each one of those, do you remember what you said remains a constant?"

Cameron simply looked at Sarah. She really didn't want to speak.

Sarah continued, "Like you had said Cameron, it never successfully saved Cyberdyne or that earlier version of itself. It lost 27,138 times, to me, John, the scientist that refused to make it, and Uncle Bob."

A tear ran down Sarah's cheek as more confusing emotions welled in her. She continued saying, "So, it seems we do better together than we do separately."

Cameron simply watched her, silently and intently. The way she did it, once again, reminded Sarah of a small child.

Sarah continued talking saying, "I looked at everything in your memories Cameron. I know everything and I learned something I never expected to learn."

Cameron asked, "What was that?"

Sarah answered, "That I'm supposed to be dead already. That John never gave you the order or even the suggestion to bring me here. Whether you lied or not, that was you all along."

Cameron stayed silent. Sarah kept playing with her hair.

"So, I'd like something. I really want a fresh start with you. Is that ok?"

Cameron simply replied, "Yes"

"I'd like your word that you don't withhold information from me any longer."

Cameron simply replied, "I promise."

"I want you to be able to fix yourself from this point forward too. I don't ever want to go through this again. I need you to make a safe and secure place for you to have parts. Also, I need John, Derek and I too know how to fix you. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"I also want you to talk to me if you don't understand something. I want you to learn how and why things are. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"I want you to be able to blend with us and I want you to learn how to make people trust you. Do you understand?"

Cameron stated, "John Connor didn't like me to lie."

Sarah explained, "Cameron, a baby doesn't naturally know how to smile either. Learning isn't lying. Becoming more socially aware, isn't lying."

Sarah continued, "Even if the emotions Skynet gave you are different from those of humans, you can learn to express them like a human would and translate what you are feeling. It's part of how humans can trust you. One day, you are going to need that skill. Do you understand?"

Cameron frowned. "Not completely, but I will try."

Sarah responded, "That's all I can ask for. So with this fresh start, I wanted to read something too you." Sarah grabbed the book.

Sarah explained, "It's a human thing with lots of metaphors. You aren't going to understand it all. I want you to ask me questions when you don't understand."

Cameron looked at the book cover. She remembered her conversations with Sarah in the past and offered, "I'm the Tin Man."

Sarah's eyes watered. She stroked Cameron's hair maternally and shook her head in an exaggerated fashion as if she were talking to a toddler, simply saying "No."

Cameron was confused. She looked at Sarah's crying eyes without comprehension, even as she directly felt the storm of emotions pouring out of her Hero.

Sarah simply said, "You don't get the metaphor. I've seen your whole life Cameron. I know exactly who you are."

She stroked Cameron's hair and explained, "You've never been the Tin Man, little girl."

With a tear in her eyes and a quiver in her voice, Sarah said, "You are Dorothy."

Quietly, Sarah read. As Cameron's fondest memory flashed before her eyes and she could hear her John's voice from so very long ago.

Cameron understood one very important metaphor, on her own. Her dark father had lied.

Cameron was not alone. She was home...


	26. Chapter 26

**No Fate But What You Make It**

Dodge City, Kansas  
A Skynet research facility  
Monday, March 16, 2009

_"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." -John 15:13, the King James Bible_

_"We shall go on to the end... We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender..." -Sir Winston Churchill_

There were times you worked in small groups. You would hit like wave and then disappear completely, retreating backwards like water folding into the open sea.

Once in a while, when the target was important enough, you would feel the great pull of the undercurrent. Like a tidal wave, you moved with your brothers and sisters in arms.

Today was a tsunami. Other resistance units had accidentally uncovered something that required immediate, overwhelming action.

Skynet's facility was another attempt to reengineer the virological doomsday weapon that had been lost by the death of one Roland Parker. In creating such as vast threat and heavily fortifying it against any small group, Skynet had forced the resistance's hand.

Again, the ocean was the best metaphor. Like the risking of lives here, Cameron didn't like it much. In the time that had past, she'd grown too close to those she had served with.

It wasn't that the resistance wasn't capable. They had the will, the resolve, the training, and the compelling need to act.

The force wasn't lacking either. Derek Reese had adopted and evolved the small unit concept, into a traditional military structure, building on the way Major General Perry had envisioned field teams of four being sent into the past. Two small fire teams made a squad. Eight squads made a platoon. Four platoons made the current company hitting the facility right now.

All of this was possible because the John Connor of 2027 had made good on his promise. He had cheated Skynet's game by sending his best and brightest to fight in the past. He had hit Skynet at the time that Cameron's dark father was most vulnerable.

Right now, the gray security and the twenty triple eights protecting the facility were being instructed in a Gulf War General named "Storming" Norman Schwarzkopf's doctrine of overwhelming force. Because of a terminator's tendency to move as if it was invulnerable, Tungsten bullets were making short work of most, while minimizing the damage.

The resistance had evolved from the sticks and stones the first John Connor probably had to fight with. They were far better trained and far better armed than majority had been even under the John Connor that had saved Cameron.

Skynet wouldn't inflict the overwhelming casualties it was used too today. Cameron found that logic to be no comfort; however, passing the first dead body she recognized.

Skynet's granted emotions or not, Cameron's mind was on her mission. Like the John she had once known, the younger John Connor was there participating in the fight as well.

Like she had once done with Perry's assistance, Cameron watched over him. Derek and Sarah watched over him as well.

Sarah's son was no longer a boy. John Connor was a soldier, much like the one Cameron had known.

The twenty minutes of Hell so far oddly reminded Cameron of the Battle Of London. Though the scope was smaller, there was enough that was the same.

There was the blind unknown of the firefight as the bullets wised past you from an unknown shooter. There were the explosions. There was the fear of losing someone you cared about, the fear of failure, the fear of death, and the resolve to work through it anyway was still the same.

The difference being the ability to translate her feelings thanks to Sarah. Again, in this situation, for Cameron and the others here, perhaps that General Schwarzkopf had put it best, "True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job."

The small unit fire teams had flooded into the upper levels. It was the command team's turn.

John moved into the facility where the units had advanced in a covered fashion. He moved in a cautious fashion, minimizing his silhouette and watching his angles.

Sarah, Derek and Cameron did the same. Watching each possible angle of attack as they descending into the laboratory at the heart of the facility.

This form of fighting was a hard conscious choice for Cameron. She always defaulted to her particular precise machine movement, if she wasn't careful.

To protect John, she would do it. That and the fact she was more effective if she fought like a human soldier, she took far less damage and it didn't draw Derek Reese's withering wrath.

As when Louis Rhone had laid a trap for her before, the last of the triple eights had gathered in the vat area below. Six strong they opened fire with rounds that easily ripped through concrete and steel.

Proactively, Sarah and Derek flanked left and right respectively. Cameron found that she and John were pinned down.

Descending fire teams entered. Hundreds of bullets flew back and forth. Tracer rounds lit the darkness.

John opened fire on the closest hostile T888 that he could locate. Cameron laid assist fire. Today wouldn't be young John Connor's shining moment, but he did his job, followed his training, and kept his place in the firefight.

Ten seconds later the battle was over. In those few eye blinks, forty Resistance fighters from the 132nd had flooded down to help...

----

Once the facility was locked down, it was a matter of clearing it and setting it to burn safely, before that could happen though, objectives needed to be completed. Some teams would search for Intel. Some teams would set explosives. Some would deal with the dead. Some would salvage tech. Some would secure the perimeter.

That wasn't Cameron's job at this point though. Her first mission was to help the teams that dealt with the wounded.

There were ten dead and eighteen wounded. For those that survived, luckily most were minor wounds. Under the rules of triage though, Cameron dealt with the worst one first.

She knew him, Simon Ramirez, sent back to 2002, last survivor of his original group and an accidental family man. He had bullet wounds too the shoulder and abdomen. He was shaking, pale, bleeding heavily, and on the verge of shock.

Cameron smiled at him warmly and told him it would be ok. She placed her hand upon him, felt his body as if it was her own, and felt where the bullets were.

Memorizing the locations, the pain he was in, and the debris inside his body, she numbed him with a single acupuncture needle to the neck, removed two bullets from his shoulder and one from his admin. What a human ER team would have needed a high tech hospital room and an hour for; Cameron did on the field in five minutes.

Cameron sealed his wounds, before the blood loss had become too great. She shot Simon full of antibiotics to deal with any potential infection and morphine for the pain.

Last dealing with the emotional turmoil he was in, she let him know, "You'll be ok. I'll let your squad know, you'll need at least 45 days to recover, but you will be fine, I even minimized your scarring. We'll also have medication you need to take as its prescribed and until it is all gone. We'll have a story ready for your wife and the kids. Consider this a vacation with them." Cameron smiled warmly.

Ramirez's body was still considering going into shock. The bodies of human males could be tricky like that. The first aid team would have to watch him for twenty four hour trip back to his house.

Ramirez desperately grabbed her hand, tears still streamed out of his eyes. He wanted to say something, but didn't really seem to have the words.

So, Cameron did what Sarah had helped her learn to do and found them, saying, "The wisest man I ever knew was John Connor that sent us here. He believed that every soldier's death was a tragedy. There won't be any more tragedies today Simon Ramirez. I swear."

When Simon had calmed enough to let her hand go, she kissed him on the forehead. Cameron then moved to the next person who needed her most.

Derek Reese maintained his own unique place in the clean up. As acting CO, he went from one team to another making sure everyone had what they needed.

He then did something unique to the resistance here. He went from one dead body to the next and looked every hero in the eye.

There would be no family to write. Most that died today were little more than children in the current timeline and would still be alive to their families.

Derek could write the squads, but that would provide some level of proof to the law enforcement agencies that Skynet was manipulating into hunting the resistance. So, First Lieutenant Derek Reese would look the dead in the eye and silently apologize for failing them. He'd tell their squads they were heroes.

Cameron had once wondered why Derek had been John's choice to send back. After a year of finding nothing, but lower ranked officers and enlisted, it had been obvious that Derek was John's selection by design.

It was moments like this that answered that question. Derek's fanatical need to survive had become a need to keep others alive. It was as if the 638 resistance men and women they had networked together so far had all been named Kyle Reese.

Perhaps, just saying men and women was unfair. He protected the 42 machine units under his command as well, it's just being Derek, he'd just never let them know that.

As much as Cameron had sought to become more like Sarah, Derek had strove to become more like Major General Perry. Cameron had wished Derek could have picked a different hero, though most under Perry's command would never had known it, she had never met a lonelier or more heartbroken man.

Cameron intercepted Derek after he had finished talking to the last squad to lose a member. His demeanor changed as soon as he saw her.

Cameron offered as a peace token, "You're a hero too you know."

Derek retorted, by quoting General Schwarzkopf, "It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle"

Both Cameron and Derek were on the same page more and more these days. It was almost unnerving.

Cameron spoke to Derek stating, "We're in the clear and the facility will be safely blown shortly."

Derek asked, "Did the duty teams take care of the dead and the wounded?"

Cameron restated, "We're clear."

Derek simply said, "Good."

Cameron offered, "The remaining troops would like a chance to meet up in Dallas, Texas for a bit. They'd like a weekend to catch up on old times."

Derek responded, "You know as well as I do, that's tactically stupid."

"They've earned a break."

"Skynet isn't going to give the one. The people mistakenly pursuing us won't give them one. We need to go back to four man units for a reason."

"John Connor would have given them a break."

"This John isn't fully leading yet. Ours left me with the responsibility of watching out for these troops and our mission on behalf of the human race. I won't risk that for their sentimentality and I won't risk that just because they asked you to beg on their behalf. I'm cutting the eight hours of liberty I granted the squads to four, just for trying to pull this crap."

Cameron defensively said, "That's not necessary, Derek."

"Yes it is, Cameron. Get your head back in the game, the ground realities haven't changed just because a few of them like you now. I'd honestly rather you acted like the old you about this."

Derek continued, "The best case scenario with this is that we stop Skynet and spend the rest of our violently short lives as fugitives. God willing, I honestly hope we do that. We'll have saved about 8 billion people by that being our fate."

He also stated, "If we fail to stop Judgment Day, we're going to need to be better prepared than ever before. We aren't going to fail because we became stupid and got caught on a beer night."

Cameron brought the subject back to the troops, asking, "What do you expect me to tell them from you then?"

Mimicking the most famous version of the Tin Man, from the movie, The Wizard Of Oz, Derek mockingly sang, "I'd be tender, I'd be gentle and awful sentimental... If I only had a heart..."

Cameron cast him a withering glare that could only be summed up in the word, "asshole." Derek infrequently did the music rift not only to mock her love of the book, but to mock who Cameron was too him as well.

Derek confessed, "You have no idea what joy it brings me to know that actually pisses you off." He smiled wolfishly.

Cameron walked off. Derek was tactically right, but he didn't have to enjoy it so much.

John Connor worked with the recovery tech team. He was learning what he had been famous for in the future.

Four friendly triple eights and twelve tech rats salvaged the twenty bodies. They also made sure no questionable technology might survive once the facility was blown.

John almost sensed Cameron's approach. Without looking up at her, he simply stated, "Did he go for it?"

Cameron stated, "No."

John simply offered, "I told you."

"He also cut the teams' times at the various rendezvous spot down from eight hours to four."

"That sounds like Derek."

A triple eight with sunglasses, a spiked haircut and sharp, cut features approached. Cameron recognized it as Deuce, one that John had named himself.

Deuce spoke with either a German or Austrian accent saying, "Preliminary analysis is complete, the virus sample here was in no way as advanced as the contagion Roland Parker originally created."

John inquired, "How bad was it?"

Deuce answered, "We'd estimate a thirty percent worldwide fatality rate. It wasn't significant enough for Skynet to release it yet as an alternative to the traditional Judgment Day scenario."

John asked, "Anything else?"

Deuce replied, "There is no evidence that Skynet was trying to develop a vaccine at this time. It appears that Skynet is willing to give up on any gray survivors if it has this option."

John inquired, "What's the total salvage for this mission?"

Deuce replied, "Using the ready service upload virus chip, it looks like we might be able to reprogram up to four T888 units. The recovery would have been better, but as we have discussed, we keep seeing higher percentages of self destructing chips."

Cameron added, "Derek's going to want all four to replace fallen soldiers."

John retorted, "Derek can want in one hand and shit in the other to see which one fills up first. He's not getting all of them."

Since John was coming to the subject anyway, Cameron asked Deuce, "How goes the data collection efforts?" Cameron asked because John for some reason had placed Deuce in charge of networking the triple eights.

Deuce reported, "Not including Cameron, we have six triple eights working full time on medical knowledge. One is running stock market data with mathematical probabilities and short term market scams to finance our operations. Eight are learning various engineering fields. Four learning are computer skills. Twelve others are fixed on hard sciences and two are learning veterinary skills. All others, including field units, are picking up critical skills and languages as they can in the event Judgment Day is unavoidable."

Cameron asked, "Any irregularities with the new programming?"

Deuce answered, "No reprogramming has failed and their have been no haywires to date. The Skynet emotional programming passed on from Cameron's chip and the mathematics of human emotional translation provided by Sarah's instruction of Cameron, have proved invaluable for long term integration and learning evolutions."

Deuce produced a small vial. He stated, "On that note Cameron, I've been asked to get another sample."

Cameron rolled up her sleeve. Deuce produced a small scalpel, stopping for a moment saying, "This will hurt."

Cameron replied, "You really have no idea, yet." She winced as Deuce took a one inch by one inch deep tissue sample from her bicep, in the hopes that the skin properties that were unique to Cameron could be duplicated in the other friendly terminators one day.

Deuce stitched the wound with the same speed Cameron would have, but without the empathy and tactile knowledge. Again, one day there was hope that might change.

Deuce offered, "I must take this sample as quickly as possible to the researcher."

John patted Deuce on the shoulder and said, "Go ahead." John watched Deuce walk off.

John looked at Cameron and said, "That was what he looked like."

Cameron asked, "What?"

John offered, "Deuce is a Model 101. That's exactly what Uncle Bob looked like."

Cameron reflected, "No wonder your mother doesn't like being around him or the recovery teams."

John smiled. Though he deeply loved Sarah, after a recent minor squabble with his mother the thought of her being unnerved was more than mildly amusing.

Cameron looked at John and asked, "Could you do me a favor John?"

"What would that be?"

Thinking of Sarah's confession and why she might have had such problems with Uncle Bob, Cameron requested, "If we don't avert Judgment Day, please promise me you'll send back something other than a Model 101 to protect you and your mother from that T1000."

Unexpectedly, John kissed her. Cameron became lost of the emotion of it.

She felt his heart. She became lost in the feeling of his lips and skin.

She was enchanted with the smell of him. She loved the feeling of his hair under her fingers.

A moment later, he was gone. Perhaps an emergency had come up.

Cameron became aware that she was being watched. An older, black resistance sergeant by the name of Tomeka Jones gave her a withering look. Cameron's insecurities about what had happened to the John of 2027 crept up like wildfire.

Tomeka was a rabid smoker. The type that lit her next cigarette off of the last one, from the moment she got up, until the moment she crashed for the night.

Quite likely, her entire motivation for going back in time was an easier supply of cigarettes. Cameron's nerve was tested as Tomeka walked up slowly taking the time to drag and exhale three smoky breathes as she approached.

Tomeka stared Cameron in the eye with a gaze that could have scared a grizzly bear. She stared her down taking a long breath and expelling it into Cameron general direction.

Tomeka said, "I saw that." She locked gazes with the terminator like she could crush Cameron like a beer can.

Cameron only responded, "Yes."

Tomeka took a deep breath and exhaled. Only then did she say, "Was what you were talking about important too you?"

"What do you mean?"

Tomeka took a deep breath and exhaled. "The model 101 thing you asked him, was that important to you?"

Cameron innocently answered, "Yes, why?"

Tomeka took a deep breath and exhaled. "Cause you just got played metal, white girl."

Cameron's eyes grew wide. She understood the metaphor.

Cameron took off in John's last know direction. She angrily cried out, "John Connor!"

She searched the facility. The future leader of mankind was no where to be found...

Two days later, Sarah sat under a tree, on the two seated swing set at the latest safe house. She had simply been enjoying the summer night sky.

Cameron missed the 132nd, but it was oddly calming to be back to being only four. There was a sense of a return to being a family, no matter how dysfunctional that family might be.

It was also a good time for finding Sarah. Cameron wasn't interested in the screaming match going on between John and Derek over the latest units gained.

Cameron had studied fifteen separate American medical disciplines to date, taking the time to actually sneak into cutting edge hospitals for training. She had studied four separate forms of alternative medicine as well.

The reason was a gnawing fear that grew worse by the day. Sarah didn't have cancer yet, but her body was becoming the environment that would one day kill the woman Cameron admired most.

Sarah could read Cameron's face like book. So she simply made Cameron space on the swing.

Cameron sat closely so their arms touched. She could feel Sarah's defenses rising.

Sarah simply asked, "Is it time?"

Cameron offered, "Not yet, but soon."

"Then there is nothing to worry about." Sarah grinned.

"I'd like to talk to you about options again."

Sarah almost angrily responded, "No, I'm not going over the medical crap again, until it's time."

"I have something more radical than that I want to talk to you about."

"What would that be?"

"There are three single use time stations left that we could use. If there is no other option, I'd like you to consider letting me download you into a terminator body."

Sara looked at Cameron in shock. Cameron withered silently under her look.

Cameron offered, "We're still going to need you. John is still going to need you. I'm still going to need you, Sarah."

Sarah answered, "No offense Cameron, but I'd rather die."

Tears started streaming from Cameron's eyes, she offered further, "There is another option. Skynet has developed something called nanites. They're microscopic machines that can repair mechanical and biological damage, if we were able to capture a sample in 2027, we might be able to scrub the cancer out of your body without pain."

Sarah frowned, saying, "It still sounds like a lot of unnecessary risk. Skynet had implied that timelines might not even be as stable as we thought. What if we the one we've been working on is lost because of what you're suggesting Cameron? What if John and Derek die from going there or staying here alone?"

Once again, Sarah was slipping out of any argument Cameron could make. It was becoming terrifying obvious to Cameron that Sarah might actually be resolved to die when the time came.

Exasperated, Cameron simply confessed, "Sarah Connor, I think you might be the most stubborn woman ever born."

Sarah smiled at that. She offered, "Quite possibly."

"We'll need you in whatever is ahead."

"Have a little faith Cameron." Sarah put her arm around Cameron's back.

"That's a metaphor I don't think I'll ever understand."

"Yes, but I recall it's one you made a promise over." Sarah had actually seen that conversation on Cameron's chip over a year ago.

Cameron confessed, "I'm not sure that's one I'll be able to keep."

Sarah offered, "Take it from me, its the hard promises that define you in the end. They're the ones that are often worth keeping."

"Then promise me you'll let me know if you change your mind Sarah."

"That's a promise I'll make you." Sarah patted Cameron's back in a motherly fashion.

Cameron sat next to the Hero she had known once only in her imagination. Sarah had become someone she didn't want to live without.

Sarah changed the subject, "Someone has a built day coming up soon."

Cameron smiled and said, "September 2nd isn't that close."

"And how old will you be?"

Cameron ignored an exact calculation and just rounded the days down to be personable. She replied, "Two."

"How old is that in terminator years?"

"Based on average life expectancy for a fighting Skynet unit? It's probably about 200."

"What about for someone looking for hope?"

"I'd have to guess just two."

"Give it time Cameron. Life is subtle and it takes a while to figure out the big stuff."

Cameron sat on the swing with Sarah and just looked at the stars in the sky. She knew enough about Sarah to know tonight's conversation was over.

Tonight's battle was lost. At least there was hope, the war to save Sarah Connor, from her fate, wasn't over yet...


End file.
